CAP Wrong Again: Public Plan Will Kill, Not Create, a Competitive Health Insurance Market

Conn Carroll / March 26, 2009

The Center for American Progress has a new report out titled “Competitive Health Care: A Public Health Insurance Plan that Delivers Market Discipline”. Listing everything that we disagree in their report would result in something much longer than a blog post, but since they mention us by name, we need to make one fact clear: including a public plan in a Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan (FEHBP) health insurance reform model would destroy a competitive health insurance market.

Here is what CAP writes:

Promoting choice among health insurance plans to reform a dysfunctional health insurance market is an idea that has been around for decades. The Heritage Foundation has long advocated health reform modeled on the choices in the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program, which provides health insurance to federal employees.

This is true. The Heritage Foundation has long supported a FEHBP-style insurance exchange. But then Cap continues: (more…)