Health Affairs Blog: Parsing Public Plan Proposals

by Peter McMenamin - The “public plan” is today’s ultimate Rorschach test; different observers may see very different perspectives. Particularly when the advocates leave loose ends, their opponents weave those untied threads as they will. Nobody’s on firm ground so no concrete debate is possible. Lots of smoke, hardly any light. It seems that there are some simpler clarifying questions that could be addressed to get the proponents to demonstrate that they do have specific ideas on how to get there (wherever there is) from here. Proponents should be expected to provide practical demonstrations of how a public plan could work in a real world. Read More