A major talking for public option/single payer proponents is that the government does a better job of controlling health care costs than the private sector. So when Bill Kristol claimed otherwise on the Daily Show, Ezra Klein cited a study from public option/single payer advocate Jacob Hacker purporting to show that between 1997 and 2006, the per enrollee average annual growth for private health insurance was 7.3%, compared to 4.6% for Medicare. But as AEI’s Nick Schulz points out, a 2007 CBO report by Perter Orszag found that between 1975 …
Political scientist Jacob Hacker claims in the Washington Post that the “Blue Dog” Democrats’ opposition to Obama’s “public plan” is not in the interests of their constituents – particularly farmers, ranchers, small business owners, and low- and middle-income workers, who would supposedly benefit from premium assistance and from the cost reductions he claims a Medicare-like public plan for the non-elderly would bring, as well as from the requirement that “all but the smallest of employers make a meaningful contribution to the cost of coverage.” On the contrary, it is precisely …
Defending the Obama administration’s government-run health insurance option, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said yesterday: I think if you listen to the debate on Capitol Hill about health care you’re likely to hear two very important words: choice and competition. A public option that you’re referring to is nothing more than the ability to provide more choice through competition. Those, I think, are values that you’ll hear throughout this debate as being held near and dear to the hearts of not just people on Capitol Hill, but throughout the …
