Sen. Nelson Says “No” to Public Option A Bit Too Late
Robert Moffit /
In the wake of widespread public backlash over his eleventh-hour deal to get increased federal taxpayer Medicaid funding for his vote, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) has been hitting the media circuit, assuring reporters that he won’t vote for any merged health care bill that funds abortions with taxpayer dollars or has a government-run health insurance plan.
“There is zero chance (of a public option),” he said to The Chadron Record. “I’ve made it so clear. It isn’t going to happen.” But Sen. Nelson has already allowed a “public option” to flourish by voting for the Senate version last month.
Medicare, for example, is the quintessential public plan. Instead of the Medicare bureaucracy contracting with private carriers to provide health coverage, as it does today, the latest Senate bill turns that responsibility over to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the agency that runs the federal civil service and the popular Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEBHP). Under the Senate bill, OPM would sponsor two “multi-state” health plans —one of which must be nonprofit — to compete against private plans in the country.
In other words, there could be health plan competition on a national level in every state, but only the federal government would field these national health plans. These government-sponsored health plans would have an exclusive franchise: No private health plans would be able to compete in the same way as the selected health plans sponsored by OPM. In effect, the Senate bill creates a set of “public options” that are thinly disguised as private health plans.