- In Biden’s campaign he proposed a new public option that would provide an alternative to private insurance for Americans who are not eligible for Medicare or Medicaid.
- The effects of a public option would depend on the details of the plan.
- In general, payment rates are expected to be lower under a public option than most commercial insurers.
As one of his campaign promises, President Joe Biden pledged to build on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) by passing a public health insurance option.
Under the plan forwarded in his campaign, the new public option would provide an alternative to private insurance for Americans who are not eligible for Medicare or Medicaid.
The plan would cover ACA essential health benefits. It would be free for people with an income below 138 percent of the federal poverty line, and premiums would be capped for others at 8.5 percent of their income.
This is just one of many public option proposals that politicians have floated. The proposals vary in terms of eligibility criteria, benefits coverage, premium rates, provider payment rates, and more.
“Right now, the discussion in the United States on a public option is a theoretical one,” Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association (APHA), told Healthline.
“Until people actually put something down on paper for people to react to, it’s going to be very difficult to predict the winners and losers and the people that would be for or against it,” he said.
Source: healthline