Health Care & Prescription Drugs In the News

On the face of it, a public health insurance option shouldn't be controversial. Americans and businesses would be given a choice: keep their current coverage, pick another private plan, or select a new public option.

It's a choice Americans want. The Wall Street Journal and NBC found that 76 percent of Americans support a public option. Yet several key Republican leaders in Congress are doing their best to assist the insurance industry in defeating it.

Stuck in the middle of this debate are Michiganders like Haslett resident David Meeder. After over 30 years of paying his bills on time, one trip to the emergency room left him with a bill he couldn't afford, ruining his credit history. This was while David was supposedly covered by an employer-provided package. The cost of his coverage had increased by over 100 percent in one year, forcing him to switch to a lower-cost plan with an extremely high deductible.

Health insurance premiums have doubled over the last 10 years, and they're set to double again over the next eight. The skyrocketing cost of health care has made federal, state, and local health care programs more expensive, contributing to Michigan's budget crisis.

And it's not just our wallets that are hurt by exploding health care costs. Many risk their health to avoid exorbitant fees; according to an AFL-CIO survey released last week, more than half of Michiganders - even those with insurance - postpone or skip medical care because of cost.

The opponents of a public option know costs are a problem. Karen Ignagni, CEO of the trade group that represents health insurers, has talked about the need to reduce the steep growth of health care costs. Is it that she doesn't think a public option will achieve lower costs? Nope. In a recent interview Ignagni said, "(A public option is) not just cheaper, it's significantly cheaper."

Instead, the insurance industry and other opponents argue that a public option will force doctors to take payments so low that they will go bankrupt. They say this with a straight face despite the fact that the American Academy of Family Physicians, National Physicians Alliance, and American Medical Student Association support the public option. Key senators have made it clear that the public plan will play on a level playing field, obeying the same rules as private insurers.

The reality is that the public option will be well positioned to implement the type of smart cost controls that private insurers should have adopted long ago. It could create incentives for primary care and prevention; pay doctors for outcomes, not just the number of tests run and procedures performed; and create incentives for utilizing research on which treatments work best, silencing the hyperbolic sales pitches of drug company salesmen.

Congress should follow the will of the public on the public plan. Failure to do so would allow the status quo to cripple our economy and damage our health, and that's not much of an option.

Kara Rumsey works for PIRGIM (www. pirgim.org), an advocacy group in Ann Arbor.