THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: HEALTH CARE BATTLE BREWING, POLITICAL GROUPS GEAR UP

“It’s one thing to seek strong and broad support for different faces of healthcare reform, but it’s another to draw hard lines in the sand. That demonstrates a reckless disregard of the American public’s need for meaningful healthcare reform,” says Ron Pollack, president and CEO of Families USA, a health-reform advocacy organization in Washington. “Clearly, on the very difficult issues that are at the heart of healthcare reform, there needs to be a willingness to search for common ground instead of a knee-jerk rigidity.”

Rob Pollack was the Co-Director of SFCG’s Healthcare Consensus Group.

The Obama administration hopes to give all Americans the option of buying into a public, Medicare-style health insurance plan. That is now shaping up to be the biggest flash point in the emerging debate about healthcare reform.

Advocates of a Medicare-style plan say it would give consumers a lower-cost alternative to private insurance, forcing those private insurers to become more responsive to consumer needs. Opponents counter that it would undermine the private health insurance market by prompting millions of businesses to switch to the cheaper, public alternative. In the long term, they argue, that would undermine consumer choice in healthcare.

Question to the Blogosphere:  Would forcing the private insurers to compete with a public, cheaper alternative decrease the amount of health care offered?  Are there examples of public health care systems that have not decreased quality of care?  Is there a way to preserve private insurance companies while providing an alternative to expensive insurance for the poorest in the country.  Is the problem in this debate more about the sustainability of private insurance companies or about health care?  What tactics can the Obama administration use to build common ground between the health insurance companies and health-reform advocacy groups?