Paul Waldman on the often-overlooked benefit of a public option — security:
Health-care wonks worth their salt will tell you that the big issue in the current effort to reform our abysmal health-care system is cost control. They say if we don’t do something to rein in the spiraling cost of health-care, it will eventually bankrupt us all.
That’s all true. But for the most part, we haven’t heard the best argument for a public option: security. It’s what ought to be at the center of this debate, and it’s the one thing private insurance companies will never offer.
The single-payer and hybrid systems in place in every other country in the developed world have many admirable features: lower costs, universal coverage, and better health outcomes. But what ought to make us most envious is their security — it’s what they have and we desperately need.