HCAN on Public Plan and Advocacy
Washington, DC – Health Care For America Now – the nation’s largest health care campaign – issued the following statement today in response to the release of Jacob S. Hacker, Ph.D.’s report entitled “THE CASE FOR PUBLIC PLAN CHOICE IN NATIONAL HEALTH REFORM” (pdf):
“Creating a high quality, affordable public plan alternative to private insurance is absolutely essential to achieving comprehensive health care reform solutions that will work for all of us in 2009. A public plan will not only level the playing field and force private insurers to offer benefits that meet our needs, but it will also add the must-have mechanism of cost control that will force private insurers to offer those benefits at prices we can truly afford.
We agree with Congressman Stark that a health care solution that does not include a public plan would be a non-starter. President-elect Obama ran on the promise of giving consumers a choice of keeping the private insurance they have or opting in to a newly-created public insurance plan, and it is the second part of this hybrid reform that ensures we are no longer at the mercy of the private insurance industry which keeps charging us more, giving us less, and lining its own pockets with profits.
The insurance industry strongly opposes the public plan for a reason. They don’t want the competition. They don’t want cost control. They don’t want to have to change the way they operate. But we have built a grassroots movement made up of more than 550 local, state, and national organizations and millions of individuals who believe we need a guarantee of quality, affordable health care we all can count on, and in conjunction with our more than 160 allies in Congress and the new Administration, we intend to see it happen in 2009.”
- Richard Kirsch, National Campaign Manager, Health Care For America Now
“Creating a high quality, affordable public plan alternative to private insurance is absolutely essential to achieving comprehensive health care reform solutions that will work for all of us in 2009. A public plan will not only level the playing field and force private insurers to offer benefits that meet our needs, but it will also add the must-have mechanism of cost control that will force private insurers to offer those benefits at prices we can truly afford.
We agree with Congressman Stark that a health care solution that does not include a public plan would be a non-starter. President-elect Obama ran on the promise of giving consumers a choice of keeping the private insurance they have or opting in to a newly-created public insurance plan, and it is the second part of this hybrid reform that ensures we are no longer at the mercy of the private insurance industry which keeps charging us more, giving us less, and lining its own pockets with profits.
The insurance industry strongly opposes the public plan for a reason. They don’t want the competition. They don’t want cost control. They don’t want to have to change the way they operate. But we have built a grassroots movement made up of more than 550 local, state, and national organizations and millions of individuals who believe we need a guarantee of quality, affordable health care we all can count on, and in conjunction with our more than 160 allies in Congress and the new Administration, we intend to see it happen in 2009.”
- Richard Kirsch, National Campaign Manager, Health Care For America Now
***For additional information on HCAN or an interview with Richard Kirsch, please contact Jacki Schechner at 202-454-6196 or 202-510-0605***
