Extra special punditry, because everyone cares about the health of health reform.
Ezra Klein:
Health Care Reform for Beginners: The Many Flavors of the Public Plan
If the public plan is ruthlessly lowering its administrative costs and garnering a reputation for decent, good-faith service, it will take market share from the private insurers. The private insurers will have to respond in kind to retain their customers. If they fail to adapt, the system could become something resembling a single-payer structure.
But that's not the most likely outcome. Rather, the theory here is simple: If you can't replace them, convert them. If the public plan works, then private insurance will work better as well. In this telling, the simple existence of the public plan forces a more honest insurance market: Private insurers need to offer premiums closer to their marginal cost, and they have to cut administrative costs, and they have to work on their reputation for cruelty and capriciousness. The existence of another option changes the market. Individuals will have access to private insurers, but they'll no longer be stuck with them.
Kaiser: see also mcjoan, earlier:
Republicans React To Obama Insistence On Public Plan Inclusion
President Obama's insistence on having a government-run public insurance option for the middle class risks bipartisan support for reform, Senate Republicans said in a letter to the White House released Monday, The Associated Press reports.
The letter — from nine Republican members of the Senate Finance Committee — says insisting on a plan when Medicare and Medicaid are already moving toward insolvency would be a mistake. It says that "'creating a brand new government program will not only worsen our long term financial outlook but also negatively impact American families who enjoy the private coverage of their choice,' said the letter, signed by all but one of the Finance Republicans."
Kaiser:
Dems Prepare Message As Congress Reacts To Kennedy's Health Reform Draft
Congressional Democrats are preparing the message to go with their sweeping health reform in both the House and the Senate, after Sen. Edward Kennedy's draft reform bill was circulated, CNN.com reports.
Roll Call: includes commentary from a host of players, including Daschle, Gephardt, Newt and others:
The Mission Ahead: Health Care Reform
Roll Call's Mission Ahead for June addresses the complex and ever-changing issue of health care reform. In this special section, experts weigh in on the upcoming Congressional debate and what the U.S. health care system might look like when the debate is all over. We also provide expert analysis on the health care system in Canada and the reform plan that was implemented a few years ago in Massachusetts -- which may be used as a model for what's adopted at the national level.
Robert Reich:
So the question right now is how hard the President will push to get a real public option, a broad mandate, and enough revenues to support universal health care. The Republicans are showing remarkable unity, as they did on the stimulus package and the budget. Yet the President seems intent on a bipartisan bill. Meanwhile, Pharma, Insurance, charities, state and local governments, and labor are all putting maximum pressure on individual Democrats. Yet the President seems wary of twisting arms. What's the result? Keep your eyes on the details.
Health Care Blog:
An under-the-radar debate is occurring in health care between those who say data shows that practice variations across the land are "unwarranted" and those who maintain that such variation is inevitable given socioeconomic population differences and cost of practice differences in major metropolitan and rural areas.
Maggie Mahar's Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much (more here)