The public option debate

August 25, 12:43 AMChicago Healthcare Policy ExaminerPhillip Crivellone

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Health and Human Services Secretary Sebelius sounded willing to
abandon the public option one week but then supported it the next.

Just last week the national media seemed convinced that President Obama was capitulating on his coveted public option proposal as the health care debate sunk lower into an emotional morass of fear, rumors and divisive innuendo.

However, the president, as echoed by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, has reiterated his commitment to the public option as a necessary tool in health care reform that would cover millions of uninsured Americans and "keep insurance companies honest." The option, which as a non-profit, federally run entity could offer more affordable coverage has been assailed by Republicans as a gross and unwarranted government intrusion into the free market.

On Aug. 18, WTTW's Eddie Arruza quizzed two guests on the need for a public option on Chicago Tonight. Dr. Claudia Fegan of the Chicago-based Physicians for a National Health Program, an organization advocating for a European-style single-payer national health system, said that a public option would be "single-payer like" but still off the mark of an ideal system of insurance that is funded almost entirely by the federal government. She was pitted against Prof. Tomas Philipson of the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy. Philipson, who served as Sen. John McCain's senior health care adviser during last year's presidential campaign, maintained that "the cost-control issue is really not being solved at all by the government," as evidenced by the large presence of a current public plans in the marketplace like Medicare and Medicaid. He also believed the profit-system that comes with private insurers only sees about 1 percent of health care spending go toward profit, absolving the free market from culpability.

(Watch Fegan's reaction when Philipson uses African-American gun violence as support a point on quality of life statistics. Kudos to her for reacting coolly)