Democrats Seem Sort of Tepid About the Public Option

Bloomberg

Hillary Clinton supports adding a public option to the Affordable Care Act -- that is, a government-run insurance program to compete with private health insurance. She announced her support in July, and the public option was the only specific change to Obamacare that she mentioned in her economics speech last week.

This position makes a lot of practical sense, as the New Republic’s Brian Beutler has been pointing out. The Congressional Budget Office has scored a public option as deficit-reducing, which means Democrats wouldn’t have to raise taxes or cut spending to pay for it. A public option has also polled well. For example, back in December 2009 a CBS News/New York Times survey found 59 percent favored including a public option in Obamacare, with only 29 percent opposed.

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Unfortunately for public-option advocates, the candidates most likely to become new Democratic senators in 2017 don’t seem especially interested in advocating that policy.

Only one of 11 candidates, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, mentions support for a public option on the issues section of his campaign website. Indeed, only six of the 11 that I surveyed even had a “health care” section on their websites. Kamala Harris, in solidly Democratic California, has nine different subject areas, from immigration to the environment and “protecting animals.” She has separate tabs for higher education and K-12 education. But no health care.