Argument: Employers may dump their employees into public insurance

Support

Stuart Butler. “The Case Against: The public plan will unfairly crowd out private coverage”. Heritage Foundation. July 28, 2009: “[With public insurance] there would actually be big changes for many already insured people. Faced with a low-cost public option, many employers would simply close down their existing plan and push their employees into the public plan. Remember that Wal-Mart encouraged eligible employees to sign up for Medicaid, until states and unions thwarted them. All serious analysts agree that many Americans would find themselves dumped into the public plan.” Because a public plan would have limited insurance, the public plan may not be able to cover all these people dumped by their employers. In the end, therefore, a public plan may leave more people without insurance, employer-provided or otherwise. Or, it may just entirely negate itself by simply transferring insured individuals from private plans to a public one, leaving little room for the remaining uninsured.