With lawmakers facing voters during the district work period this month and public passions about health care on the rise, Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, joined health care expert Jacob Hacker on a conference call with reporters today to declare their strong support for a public health insurance option to be included in any reforms. They both said the country needs a robust public health insurance plan that competes with private insurers to rein in costs and make health care affordable for all.
Sen. Brown and Hacker explained that health care reform would ensure that people can keep the health insurance they have if they like it but would provide the guarantee of comprehensive affordable coverage to any lacking employer insurance.
Hacker said the public health insurance plan is crucial as a “benchmark” on cost and quality, a “backup” option that offers financial and health security for people without workplace coverage as well as small employers without access to good group health options, and as a cost-control backstop. He also said that cooperatives cannot do these three crucial things and is “not a serious substitute for a public plan.”
Sen. John Rockefeller, D-W.Va., has also gone public with his case against consumer-owned health care cooperatives.
“Are cooperatives going to be effective in taking on these gigantic insurance companies?” Sen. Rockefeller asked in a Politico interview recently. “The answer is a flat no.”
OppenheimerFunds, Inc., one of the nation’s largest and most respected asset management companies also weighed in against cooperatives. Two analysts with the group recently wrote that “as the co-ops are currently described, we think they would be a big positive for the managed care group, but it seems to us that they would be destined to fail from the moment of creation.”
Sen. Brown said his office has received mountains of mail from Ohioans without good health insurance, struggling to find affordable, quality health care. He told the story of “Loretta from Hamilton County,” who works two jobs, neither of which offers health insurance, has a family history of cancer and can’t afford needed medical tests because she has no medical coverage.
Sen. Brown said the public health insurance option passed unanimously by Democrats out of the Senate HELP committee would be available in every state, every territory and fully administered by the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services.
“It will expand access to quality affordable coverage, providing a coverage safety net for recent college graduates and giving small business owners choices they don’t have today,” said Sen. Brown. “Cooperatives do not deliver the competition we need to keep prices in check and offer the kind of services people need.”
Responding to a question from The Washington Post about how the six senators negotiating the Senate Finance Committee bill represent less than 2 percent of the population, Sen. Brown made clear that the Senate HELP committee bill is supported by lawmakers who represent a broad cross-section of the population – large and small states, northeastern, southern and midwestern states. Hacker added that the Republican senators negotiating the bill in the Senate Finance Committee are at the extreme right of the ideological spectrum and don’t represent the views of even mainstream Republicans.
Both Sen. Brown and Hacker agreed that Congress has made significant progress in its support of a public health insurance option already.
“We should not lose sight of how far we’ve come,” said Hacker. “All three bills coming out of committee include a strong national public health insurance option.”
Sen. Brown and Hacker believe prospects are good for its inclusion in the final legislation – with overwhelming public support for it – noting that it would be a fight to the finish with the health insurance industry. PhRMA and others vested in killing the idea are spending $1.4 million a day to spread misinformation in hopes of turning public opinion against it.