New Report: Triggered Public Option Preferable

By GottaLaff

I don't have much of a head for this, so I'll leave it to you to opine in Comments:

The report says that the Senate and House’s public option provisions (which require the public plan to independently negotiate rates with providers) hold little hope of lowering costs in areas of the country with high provider concentration. In areas where hospitals have “too strong a market presence to be excluded from insurer networks,” hospitals could dictate prices, stripping the public plan of its ability to negotiate cheaper rates, the report warns. [...]

[P]olicymakers should consider basing the trigger on “overall growth in national health spending.” “An advantage of using growth in national health expenditures (NHE) is that the data are regularly and consistently reported and are directly related to the purpose of a public option — to create competition with private insurers to reduce health spending growth,” the report notes.

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