A public plan will reduce costs and improve access

I have baseball on my mind: It is spring, the teams are on the field, the season has begun. It seems to me that winning the health-care debate is a lot like the Chicago Cubs' winning the World Series—it hasn't happened in forever, and some proponents are hearing the same old refrain of "Wait till next year."

This is usually a safe bet; we have never won the World Series of health care. The last time we even won a big game was in 1997, with the passage of the Children's Health Insurance Plan. Before that, you have to go back to 1965, when we won Medicare and Medicaid.

Those were hard-fought victories, and the opposition then is familiar now. Our current debate has focused on whether reform should offer the choice of a public health-insurance plan. Many of the same arguments against a government-sponsored plan were used at that time, too—chiefly, that a public program will lead to a single-payer health-care system. The claim was nonsense, and nothing more than a shortsighted tactic. Fortunately, Congress didn't fall for it. Medicare is arguably one of the most popular government programs on the books today.

A growing number of Americans already get their health care from a public plan, including Medicare, Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Plan (the Department of Veterans Affairs, of course, also provides benefits). There are public-private hybrids as well, like state employee health plans where the government assumes the risk and insurance companies are responsible for the management. The use of a public plan as it is currently proposed is simply an extension of what we have already done in public policy during the last 50 years. We just have to circle the bases.

You get a free pass to first. Americans of all political affiliations overwhelmingly support a public plan. Part of the reason for this is because these plans have a proven track record of offering a far greater choice of doctors than private plans do.