Why the Health Care Reform Public Option Can Work

The heated controversy over the public option in the Democratic health care reform bill is losing steam in the Senate, according to Majority Leader Harry Reid, and it’s not difficult to see why. Wavering Senators know that if a public option is implemented, they’ll risk losing the seemingly unlimited flow of lobby money they worked so hard to earn from Big Insurance.

Congress needs to put its constituents first and its corporate masters second. The public option is a strong idea, because it spurs competition and provides a choice for individuals struggling against tyrannical insurance companies.

Americans have few choices regarding their health care plans. Most receive health care benefits from their employers, if they are offered, and in some cases, they get to choose between full coverage or health spending accounts. In other cases, they get to choose between higher premiums or lower deductibles. In the end, though, they’re still stuck with an insurance company chosen for them by their employers. Without the ability to shop for coverage, employees are at the mercy of their bottom-line-driven employers. And when it comes to health insurance, the only benefits that interest most employers are cost-benefits. The employee, then, is left in a lurch.

Families facing off against an insurance company not wanting to cover specific prescriptions or symptoms have no recourse but to roll over and play dead. These families cannot just drop their insurance company and choose another one, the way they would with almost any other unsatisfactory service such as a banking plan, a medical treatment or a car insurance policy. In most cases, the consumer gets to choose another vendor when they feel they’ve been treated unfairly. This creates a system of checks and balances between the consumer and the vendor. In a system where the consumer has no recourse and is bound to a vendor regardless of circumstance, the checks and balances are removed and the consumer is at the mercy of the vendor. Thus, competition is squashed, because choice is no longer an option. A public option would return choice to the consumer. If implemented properly, competition will be restored to the marketplace and prices and services will be kept in check.

Whether it can work is not open to question. It can. The question, instead, should be, “How can it best be implemented?” Several moderate-leaning Senators consider the public option feasible only if it is done right. They will not, for example, back a public option funded by taxpayers or run solely by a government-run organization. They will, however, support a public option if it is operated by a non-profit organization. This is a sensible idea because it is analogous to the concept of credit unions. Just as credit unions, which typically are run as non-profit banks, have not driven for-profit banks out of America, a non-profit organization operating a well-designed public health care option would not run private health insurers out of business. Let’s also remember that credit unions were not go begging for taxpayer dollars like their private counterparts did when a lack of risk-management and financial discipline led to the failure of their business models. Implementing a non-profit public option is one way people can ban together to mitigate the costs and risks associated with private-run health insurance.

A public option is the first real step toward legitimate health care reform. It would bring down prices for the consumer by introducing competition, and finally offers choices to consumers that have never before been available under the mismanaged health care system by which most of us are bound. Congress must put aside its profit-motive and act in the best interests of the people by supporting a public option … before it is too late.