The 'Public Plan': Love It, or Hate It?
Health policy experts duke it out over a public option for health insurance.
June 25, 2009— -- One of the most contentious parts of the health care reform debate is President Obama's idea for a federally funded and operated "public plan" for health care, which would compete with existing private health insurance plans.
ABCNews.com invited health policy professionals to submit their analysis of the direction U.S health care should take.
We present here two opinion pieces that represent both sides of the public plan debate: one for and one against.
Click here to read Who's Afraid of a 'Public Plan,' and Why?, contributed by R. Paul Duncan, who studies access to health care and issues surrounding health insurance coverage at the University of Florida. He notes in his editorial that the private health insurance industry has little to fear from a public program -- and that such an option would offer consumers another choice for health care coverage.
Click here to read 'Public Plan' Eliminates Choice, Endangers Health by Robert Goldberg, president of The Center for Medicine in the Public Interest Advance, a think tank that generally promotes private sector solutions to health care reform. Goldberg maintains that other, easily implemented options would do a better job at improving the U.S. health care system than a public plan would.
Where do you stand? Submit your comments on this debate below.