(CNSNews.com) – The woman who was in charge of implementing the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, said at a conference focused on the health care law on Tuesday that moving to a public option as a fix for the troubled government program would be “a huge mistake.”
Marilyn Tavenner, who as the head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) was in charge of implementing Obamacare and the equally troubled healthcare.gov website, was a panelist at the conference.
“I think that the public option debate or even the consideration of yet another government-oriented program would be a huge mistake,” said Tavenner, who resigned her post in 2015 and is now the president and CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans.
Tavenner was confirmed by the Senate as the head of CMS, but some Republicans opposed one person being in charge of rolling out Obamacare, including Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch of Idaho, Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and then-Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Tavenner’s remarks were in response to moderator Bruce Josten, executive vice president of government affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which hosted the conference.
“Poll after poll tells us the one thing the American public does care about in this space is called choice,” Josten said. “They want to have choice available to them in health care and health care coverage.
“There continues to be ongoing challenges as already noted, in the exchanges – or the marketplaces as the administration is now referring to them. We have some insurance carriers losing money – not all. We have some,” he said.
“Some have pulled out of a number of exchanges, and in those states, that results in limited choice available to people,” Josten said. “I think I can speak for all of the panelists up here that we would suggest it’s unfortunate that the opponents of the ACA seem to be doing victory laps around that situation; pointing to the inherent flaws of the law.
“Our concern, and I think that of many in the room today, is the reconsideration of the public option is one of the outgrowths of that kind of discussion,” Josten said. “But let me ask the panelists what they think is necessary for the next administration on the obvious need to shore up these marketplaces and guard against an onslaught of a coming battle on another public option debate.”
“I think that the public option debate or even the consideration of yet another government-oriented program would be a huge mistake, and I’ll try to explain why,” Tavenner said.
“Our history has been as a country – when we created Medicare and Medicaid it certainly went through contentious back and forth and even today, 50 years later, we make - some would argue – too many updates to Medicare and Medicaid annually,” she said.
“But it was never, let’s approve a program, and when it gets in trouble, let’s just let it get in trouble,” Tavenner said. “That’s not a realistic way to support any type of program. So over the years Medicare, Medicaid, changes were made both at the state and federal level to protect the programs and ensure their growth.”
Tavenner explained that tweaking a federal program is standard protocol – she cited Medicaid Advantage as an example -- and that Obamacare is no different.
“We’re at that same point with the exchanges, and if you think about the amount of energy and effort that’s gone on with everybody in this room over the last six years, the idea that we’d take on yet another public program when our answer lies in stabilizing the product that we have,” Tannever said. “And we have smart people in Congress. We have smart people in the administration. There are ways to sit down and work this out.
But, Tavenner warned, there may be more trouble for the health care law ahead.
“If the program hasn’t stabilized in three years, it’s going to need some additional relief,” Tavenner said. “So I just think we need to solve the problem that we have versus chasing yet another program – adding more bureaucracy and administrative cost to the system.”