Is the Public Option Dead?

Marguerite Bowling / September 04, 2009

Reporters pressed health care policy experts to address that question at a health reform panel in light of White House senior advisor David Axelrod’s assertions that President Barack Obama’s joint session next week will lay out a health care overhaul that could forgo the contentious government-run insurance option.

For Gail Wilensky, a senior fellow at Project Hope, the public option is “clearly” not dead. “It is the most contentious issue and unfortunately the administration has dug itself [into a difficult situation] by having the public plan become a prized position that is hard to negotiate around,” Wilensky told health care journalists this week at a National Press Club event by the Alliance for Health Care Reform.

Wilensky noted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and other members of Congress have said they will not support health care legislation that does not include a public plan.

“I’m worried with a public plan that when the government needs money [for the health program] it will go after benefits, populations served or whack reimbursements to physicians, which would be antithetical to the delivery improvements we’ve been talking about that are needed,” she said. (more…)