Towards Healthcare for All: The Case for a Public Option
by Noah Karvelis
In response to the failure of the Republican bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, a tremendous opportunity has opened up for supporters of healthcare as a right for all Americans. As many, such as Senator Bernie Sanders, have realized, now is the time to begin the push for a single-payer health insurance system. While any progress towards single-payer is encouraging, we must also recognize that this type of system will not be created overnight. Therefore, the first step we must take is to re-evaluate, support and implement a public option for health insurance.
What is Public Option Healthcare?
A “public option” for healthcare provides government-run healthcare not as the only form of care available, but a rather as an option to compete with private insurance corporations. What this essentially accomplishes is simple: it offers people who have been rejected by insurance companies or cannot afford existing rates another option. Citizens are no longer forced to join the private, often expensive, healthcare market, but their access to care is still ensured with a government-run option. This idea is by no means radical and in fact, is a logical solution to many of the problems that plague the Affordable Care Act in addition to being supported by physicians, citizens, and many legislators.
Why Do We Need a Public Option?
A public option is essential for progress in the fight for universal healthcare in the United States of America. As a result of high premiums and deductibles, many have realized that there are elements of the ACA that need fixing, and with the recent downfall of the Republican healthcare bill, an opportunity for another solution has risen. It is time to offer a public option for healthcare in America.
The public option will offer an alternative for those who can not afford the high deductibles and premiums that some are experiencing with the ACA. Instead of having to turn to large, for-profit corporations, Americans who can’t afford private insurance can turn to the government for affordable, effective health coverage. This will not only help insure Americans who otherwise would be unable to access it, it will likely also lower rates for all citizens as more uninsured Americans become covered.
Furthermore, the public option will help to break monopolies that health insurance companies manage and instead offer affordable rates to citizens. A government-run option will be able to expand access to healthcare in such a way that uncontrolled monopolies will be forced to cease. No longer will private insurance companies be allowed to go unchallenged; with a government-run health insurance option, insurance companies will be forced to play by the rules or lose their customers. As many, such as Robert Reich, have stated, this type of option is the only thing that will keep private health insurance companies in check and will help move us towards the ultimate goal: a single-payer system that works for all Americans.
Why Don’t We Already have a Public Option?
The public option for healthcare was originally introduced in the Affordable Care Act, but was removed due to threats of a filibuster by Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman. As a result of millions upon millions of dollars spent by lobbyists representing the pharmaceutical and health insurance industry and their massive influence on legislators, many elements of health care reform were threatened and removed. These attempts to influence legislators and “water down” health care reform facilitated the removal of elements such as the public option from the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in order to allow the bill to pass the Senate successfully.
Since then, the public option has been introduced as an amendment to the ACA and was added to the 2016 Democratic Party platform, but both of these efforts have met little success thus far. To date, the fight for implementing the public option in the healthcare market has been indefinitely halted.
What’s Next?
As a result of the failure of the Republican healthcare bill, the time has come for Democrats to move on healthcare once again. We must now continue moving towards a single-payer healthcare system and abandon our often-predatory healthcare landscape. We can never again allow people to be thrown off of their insurance or denied coverage for preexisting conditions, or charged higher rates for simply being a woman.
Instead, we must institute a public-option healthcare insurer that can provide for the many Americans who cannot afford to pay for insurance in the private, often monopolized sphere of healthcare. We must allow for these citizens to find insurance by affordable, effective means. and a public option is the way to do exactly this. From there, we must continue forward and work towards establishing a single-payer healthcare system.
Offering a public option will not hinder progress towards a single-payer system; rather, it is a step in that direction. By establishing this type of government-run health insurance option, we lay the groundwork for building upon the public option and expanding it over time into a single-payer system. Through this, we create a transition period to the single-payer system and take advantage of this period to create solutions to problems as they arise.
As a result, we can create a healthcare system that moves away from “throwing consumers to the insurance wolves” and eliminates the ability for insurance companies to continue making billions off of sick and dying Americans. The time is now to establish a public option, expand it to a single-payer system, and, in the words of Bernie Sanders, “Join the rest of the industrialized world and guarantee healthcare as a right to all people”.
