There was something interesting OMB Chief Peter Orszag said this morning in his comments at the National Press Club. He pointed to Paul Starr’s recent piece which argued that the Public Option has gotten much more press attention than it deserves relative to the importance of the ‘exchanges’ in terms of creating competition and reducing costs. Orszag must have been referring to Starr’s oped in the Times at the end of last month. But Starr’s been making his views on this topic known for some time in several publications — one of which I highlighted last week.
The key I think to Orszag’s reference to Starr is that Starr has been saying much more than that the press has focused too much attention on the Public Option. What he’s been saying is that in its present form the Public Option would not accomplish that much and that in an expanded form or even possibly in this form could have some very negative effects. In other words, in many ways Starr’s a public option skeptic.
Starr’s arguing that the real key is the exchanges and that what reformers should be focusing on is dramatically moving up the date of implementation (look particularly at what Starr says about the most critical parts of reform not being implemented — just crazy — until 2014.)
Orszag’s only explicit reference was to the over-focus on the Public Option. But that point only makes sense in the concept of the policy critique. So I suspect this reference may tell us more about White House thinking than people realize.
