By Jared Bernstein

The Christian Science Monitor

Aug. 8, 2011

Given all the talk of the budget pressure from health care entitlements—Medicare and Medicaid—it’s easy to forget that our affordability problem is as much a private sector as it is a public sector problem. If anything, costs in the public programs have consistently grown more slowly than those in the private sector (which makes sense when you think about overhead, like advertising and profits).

I stress this because Bell raised the issue of premium support—where the gov’t subsidizes your purchase of a health insurance policy—as a tool for health care reform, citing a plan that gave seniors the option to opt out of Medicare and use vouchers to purchase health insurance on the private market. You will recall that Rep Ryan’s premium-support plan took a lot of heat, but Bell argued his plan is better since it offers a more valuable voucher whose value grows more quickly.

Read the full article here

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Economic Policy Project