Remember Jacob Hacker? He's the academic who, more than a decade ago, pushed for Democrats to adopt a public option as part of Obamacare. As Hacker would explain when speaking to friendly groups, the beauty of the public option was that, over time, it would lead inevitably to single payer. It was a way to get there without publicly saying that was what you were doing.
There were lots of other Democrats in on this plan at the time. None of them wanted to talk about it openly but they were hoping they could slip some version of this into the bill. Hacker's push didn't work out, largely because Sen. Joe Lieberman decided he didn't like the dishonest approach Democrats were taking.
Ever since he's been hoping to bring it back. Today he has an opinion piece in the NY Times arguing that Kamala Harris should revive her version of the public option which was part of her 2019 campaign.
As the so-called father of the public option, I feel confident in saying that Ms. Harris’s 2019 plan for a public option was — and remains — the strongest ever put forth by a presidential candidate. She shouldn’t run away from it. She should embrace it as a central part of her 2024 campaign both because it is smart policy and because it is smart politics...
The basic idea of the public option is that Americans without secure private insurance should have the ability, no matter their age, to enroll in Medicare (or a public plan like it). Workers without coverage at work could be enrolled, and employers burdened by high premiums would be given the ability to buy affordable coverage for their workers through the public option.
As Hacker sees it, the one problem with Harris' plan in 2019 was that she was too open about what the end goal was.
In 2019, Ms. Harris tried to appease both progressives and moderates and ended up pleasing neither. On the one hand, she offered a much better version of the public option. On the other, she framed the public option as part of a 10-year transition that would end in Medicare for all.
That last element was unfortunate, weighing down her excellent public option with an unrealistic aspiration. It was also unnecessary, because her public option was designed to expand over time, without creating the public fears and interest-group backlash that Medicare for all surely would.
In other words, she should have kept the Medicare for All part of her plan a secret to avoid political backlash even though that's exactly where her plan would inevitably lead. Hacker hasn't changed at all. Fifteen years after the fight over the public option, he's still pushing for lying to the public as the best path forward.
What Hacker never mentions in his description of this plan, is the amount of money needed to keep it going. In fact, that's why Hacker prefers not telling people where the public option is headed. It's not just because it would alert people to the fact that a) their private insurance will go away and b) everyone's taxes will need to go up dramatically to pay for Medicare for All which will likely cost more than $3 trillion per year.
