Healthy Competition: Jacob Hacker Explains How Public Plan Choice Would Work

Health-care expert Jacob Hacker, professor at the University of California at Berkeley, explains to reporters the findings of his report, "Healthy Competition [1]," which concludes that a public health care insurance plan can compete on a fair basis with private insurers. The fear that a public plan would crowd out private insurers has been raised by lawmakers as a reason to not consider offering the public the option of a public insurance plan. Hacker maintains that proper safeguards would protect the ability of patients to get care and would guard against cost-shifting onto private insurers.