Bob Moffit, a health policy expert with The Heritage Foundation and co-author of our book on ObamaCare, has been a leader in the fight against a “public plan” option in ObamaCare. He believes, correctly, this will quickly wipe out private sector competition and lead us into a single-payer, government-run health system. While the “public option” was not specifically included in the health law, the Obama administration is well on its way to creating it anyway.
Here is a message that Bob sent to colleagues with important background and links:
In January of 2014, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) will sponsor two national plans to compete against private health insurance in every state of the union. It has been our view that this will establish the foundation of a government monopoly in health insurance… There is thus a re-emergence of the “public option” debate, occasioned by Robert Pear’s excellent article in The New York Times and Sarah Kliff’s flawed piece in The Washington Post blog.
In the last 24 hours, I’ve gotten several inquiries from interested parties…who wanted to know how this happened and if Heritage had written anything on it. For your edification, please find enclosed four pieces that we published on this topic, three of them at the time of the Senate debate.
www.heritage.org/research/healthcare/bg2364.cfm
www.heritage.org/research/healthcare/hl1145.cfm
http://report.heritage.org/wm3101
Stuart Butler also published a prescient piece in The New England Journal of Medicine (February 2010) on this and related issues, available here.
This is one more reason the law must be repealed!