A Very Illuminating Discussion

If you’re mystified or just trying to make sense of all the different moving pieces in the health-care policy debate taking place in the Democratic presidential primaries, I’ve got something you’ll want to see. As you know, there’s the ACA expanded with a “public option.” There are various Medicare buy-in models which can be similar to the public option additions. Then there are various flavors of “Medicare for All.” There are many political, ideological and priority questions in this debate. But I was really most interested in clarifying the moving pieces in the different plans, the technical specifics, how transitions work, how you save money without creating big disruptions, how many people the different approaches actually cover. So last week we did a TPM Briefing with President Obama’s Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Andy Slavitt, to discuss these topics. I found it an incredibly illuminating discussion and many participants told me they did too. If you are a TPM member you can watch the Briefing here.