By Emily Beaver:

President Obama's speech about health care reform Wednesday reminded me of the "sandwich" technique for giving feedback. The technique sandwiches a criticism or negative statement in between two positive statements. To soften the blow of a criticism, a manager might say, "You've done a great job improving sales, but we've gotten some complaints about your customer service skills. But overall, you're doing a great job. "

The president's speech highlighted three major priorities for health care reform: providing protections for people who already have health insurance, helping uninsured people get insurance, and lowering the costs of providing health care. The first and the last priorities are undoubtedly the most popular. Practically no one except the insurance industry thinks it's fair for people who have insurance to get dropped because of a pre-existing condition or denied coverage when they actually get sick. And with health insurance premiums rising, hardly anyone thinks trying to lower costs of providing care is a bad idea.

 

The part President Obama squeezed into the middle of his speech -- providing insurance for the uninsured -- is the most controversial. It's the part that involves the public option, or a public health plan uninsured people could select. Some say the public option amounts to a government takeover of health care. Others think it would hurt the private insurance industry, saying the industry wouldn't be able to compete with the government. And some worry offering a public option would force the government to cut benefits to existing health care programs like Medicare. According to President Obama, more than 30 million Americans are uninsured. Yet, that still means that more Americans do have insurance, than don't.

The uninsured population is disproportionately made up of young people. While we're not the only group who struggles to get insurance, many young adults face circumstances that make getting insurance difficult. Young adults often work in low-wage jobs that don't offer insurance and rarely qualify for government health insurance programs like Medicare or Medicaid. While young people may buy private insurance off the individual insurance market, the individual market is more expensive and less regulated than other types of insurance. There are no guarantees that an individual will be able to afford or even get coverage through the individual market.

White House officials have been reluctant to endorse the public option, so I was thrilled to hear President Obama say the public option could provide a good deal for consumers and pressure private insurers to provide affordable policies. It's hard to imagine how we could provide affordable insurance to the uninsured population without some kind of public option. The president also made a case for the importance of insuring everyone, saying the insured ultimately pay the costs of care for the uninsured.

Unfortunately, it's easy to imagine the politically unpopular public option getting left out of health care reform. Although President Obama sandwiched helping the uninsured in between the more popular parts of health care reform, many legislators will still think the public option is too hard to swallow.
 

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