The Public Option
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49. Jorge Luis Garcia, James J. Heckman, Duncan Ermini Leif, & Maria Jose Prados, “Quantifying the Life-Cycle Benefits of a Prototypical Early Childhood Program” (2017), https://heckmanequation.org/assets/2017/12/abc_comprehensivecba_JPE-SUBMISSION_2017-05-26a_sjs_sjs.pdf; Christopher Ruhm and Jane Waldfogel, “Long-Term Effects of Early Childhood Care and Education,” IZA Discussion Paper No. 6149 (2011), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1968100.
11. Health Care
1. Robert Pear, Thomas Kaplan, & Emily Cochrane, “Health Care Debate: Obamacare Repeal Fails as McCain Casts Decisive No Vote,” New York Times (July 27, 2017) (noting the 15 million that would lose insurance from the “skinny” repeal).
2. Mark Singer, “John McCain’s Health Care Vote Was an Act of Defiance,” New Yorker (July 28, 2017).
3. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, Reinventing American Health Care 27–30 (2014).
4. Emanuel, Reinventing, at 30–31.
5. Emanuel, Reinventing, at 31.
6. Paul Starr, Remedy and Reaction: The Peculiar American Struggle over Health Reform 42 (rev. ed. 2013).
7. Starr, Remedy and Reaction, at 19.
8. Joint Committee on Taxation, “Federal Tax Expenditures for Fiscal Years 2016–2020,” JCX-3-17, at 37 (January 30, 2017), www.jct.gov/publications.html?func=download&id=4971&chk=4971&no_html=1.
9. Starr, Remedy and Reaction, at 19, 42.
10. Starr, Remedy and Reaction, at 44–45.
11. Starr, Remedy and Reaction, at 46; Emanuel, Reinventing, at 47, 207.
12. Starr, Remedy and Reaction, at 18–19.
13. Emanuel, Reinventing, at 35. On the Rubik’s Cube, see James C. Robinson, “The Health Care Rubik’s Cube,” 27 Health Affairs 619 (2008).
14. Starr, Remedy and Reaction, at 177.
15. Helen A. Halpin & Peter Harbage, “The Origins and Demise of the Public Option,” 29 Health Affairs 1117, 1118 (June 2010).
16. Jacob S. Hacker, “Medicare Plus: Increasing Health Coverage by Expanding Medicare,” in Covering America: Real Remedies for the Uninsured (2001).
17. Jacob S. Hacker, “Health Care for America,” EPI Briefing Paper #180 (Jan. 11, 2007), www.sharedprosperity.org/bp180.html.
18. Halpin & Harbage, “Origins and Demise,” at 1118.
19. Mark Schmitt, “The History of the Public Option,” American Prospect (Aug. 18, 2009).
20. Halpin & Harbage, “Origins and Demise,” at 1119.
21. Halpin & Harbage, “Origins and Demise,” at 1119.
22. Starr, Remedy and Reaction, at 23.
23. Jennifer Steinhauer, “House Votes to Send Law to Repeal Health Law to Obama’s Desk,” New York Times (Jan. 6, 2016).
24. Starr, Remedy and Reaction, at 218.
25. Jacob S. Hacker, “There’s a Simple Fix for Obamacare’s Current Woes: The Public Option,” Vox (Aug. 18, 2016).
26. Scott Lemieux, “Public Option Would Fix Health Insurance Marketplace,” American Prospect (Aug. 24, 2016); Jonathan Cohn, “Aetna CEO Threatened Obamacare Pullout if Feds Opposed Humana Merger,” Huffington Post (Aug. 17, 2016).
27. Hacker, “Simple Fix.”
28. Hacker, “Simple Fix.”
29. Nicholas Bagley, “Medicine as a Public Calling,” 114 Michigan Law Review 57 (2015).
30. Barack Obama, “United States Health Care Reform: Progress to Date and Next Steps,” Journal of the American Medical Association (Aug. 2, 2016).
31. Emanuel, Reinventing, at 44
32. Nancy LeTourneau, “Democratic Ideas on How to Improve Health Care Are Complicated Too,” Washington Monthly (Mar. 27, 2017).
33. LeTourneau, “Democratic Ideas.”
34. Starr, Remedy and Reaction, at 226.
35. Madeline Conway, “Trump: ‘Nobody Knew That Health Care Could Be So Complicated,’ ” Politico (Feb. 27, 2017).
12. And More
1. Federal Communications Commission, “2016 Broadband Progress Report” (Jan. 29, 2016), www.fcc.gov/reports-research/reports/broadband-progress-reports/2016-broadband-progress-report.
2. Mariam Baksh, “Municipalities Dream Big on Broadband,” American Prospect (Aug. 19, 2016).
3. Federal Communications Commission, “Internet Access Services: Status as of June 30, 2016” (Apr. 2017), http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2017/db0503/DOC-344499A1.pdf.
4. Michael B. Sauter & Samuel Stebbins, “America’s Most Hated Companies,” 24 / 7 Wall St. (Jan. 10, 2017), http://247wallst.com/special-report/2017/01/10/americas-most-hated-companies-4; Alexander E. M. Hess & Douglas A. McIntyre, “America’s Most Hated Companies,” 24 / 7 Wall St. (Jan. 14, 2015), http://247wallst.com/special-report/2015/01/14/americas-most-hated-companies/4.
5. Nick Russo, Danielle Kehl, Robert Morgus, & Sarah Morris, “The Cost of Connectivity 2014,” New America Foundation, fig. 3 (Oct. 30, 2014), www.newamerica.org/oti/policy-papers/the-cost-of-connectivity-2014.
6. Executive Office of the President, “Community-Based Broadband Solutions” 14 (Jan. 2015), https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/docs/community-based_broadband_report_by_executive_office_of_the_president.pdf.
7. Edward Wyatt, “Fast Internet Is Chattanooga’s New Locomotive,” New York Times (Feb. 3, 2014).
8. Dominic Rushe, “Chattanooga’s Gig: How One City’s Super Fast Internet Is Driving a Tech Boom,” Guardian (Aug. 30, 2014).
9. Tennessee v. FCC, 832 F.3d 597, 601 (6th Cir. 2016).
10. Executive Office of the President, “Community-Based Broadband Solutions,” at 14.
11. Tennessee v. FCC, 832 F.3d 597, 602 (6th Cir. 2016).
12. Executive Office of the President, “Community-Based Broadband Solutions,” at 15.
13. Tennessee v. FCC, 832 F.3d 597, 601 (6th Cir. 2016).
14. Federal Communications Commission, “Memorandum Opinion and Order in the Matter of City of Wilson, North Carolina” (Feb. 26, 2015), https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-15-25A1.pdf.
15. Tennessee v. FCC, 832 F.3d 597 (6th Cir. 2016).
16. Lauren C. Williams, “Rural Tennesseans Could Have Gotten Free Internet but Their Legislators Shut It Down,” ThinkProgress (Apr. 17, 2017).
17. Tara Siegel Bernard et al., “Equifax Says Cyberattack May Have Affected 143 Million in the U.S.,” New York Times (Sept. 7, 2017).
18. Ron Lieber, “Finally, Some Answers from Equifax to Your Data Breach Questions,” New York Times (Sept. 14, 2017).
19. Tara Siegel Bernard, “Credit Error? It Pays to Be a VIP,” New York Times (May 14, 2011); Bobby Allyn, “How the Careless Errors of Credit Reporting Agencies Are Ruining People’s Lives,” Washington Post (Sept. 8, 2016).
20. Federal Trade Commission, Report to Congress Under Section 319 of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003, i (Dec. 2012), www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/reports/section-319-fair-and-accurate-credit-transactions-act-2003-fifth-interim-federal-trade-commission/130211factareport.pdf (finding that 5 percent of consumers had a major change in score after detecting and correcting an error; finding, too, that 26 percent of consumers had an error on at least one of the three credit reports).
21. Bryce Covert, “Get Rid of Equifax,” New York Times (Sept. 21, 2017).
22. See, e.g., Pavlina R. Tcherneva, “The Job Guarantee: Design, Jobs, and Implementation,” Levy Economics Institute Working Paper No. 902 (Apr. 2018); Mark Paul, William Darity Jr., & Darrick Hamilton, “The Federal Job Guarantee—A Policy to Achieve Permanent Full Employment,” Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (Mar. 9, 2018); Neera Tanden et al., “Toward a Marshall Plan for America: Rebuilding Our Towns, Cities, and the Middle Class,” Center for American Progress (May 16, 2017). Even centrists like former Clinton-era treasury secretary Robert Rubin and Trump administration economist Kevin Hassett have registered support for the idea. See Robert E. Rubin, “Why the U.S. Needs a Federal Jobs Program, Not Payouts,” New York Times (Nov. 8, 2017); Ben White, “Trump’s Top Economist Offers Solution
to Unemployment: More Government Jobs,” Politico Money (Nov. 1, 2017).
23. 372 U.S. 335 (1963).
24. State of New Jersey, Office of the Public Defender, “History,” www.state.nj.us/defender/history.
25. New York Civil Liberties Union, “A History of Public Defense in New York State,” www.nyclu.org/en/history-public-defense-new-york-state.
26. Holly R. Stevens et al., “State, County, and Local Expenditures for Indigent Defense Services, FY2008,” prepared for the American Bar Association (November 2010), www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/legal_aid_indigent_defendants/ls_sclaid_def_expenditures_fy08.authcheckdam.pdf.
27. Commission on the Future of Indigent Defense Services, “Final Report to the Chief Judge of the State of New York” (June 2006), http://nycourts.gov/ip/indigentdefense-commission/IndigentDefenseCommission_report06.pdf.
28. Yotam Shem-Tov, “Make-or-Buy? The Provision of Indigent Defense Services in the United States,” Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley (Dec. 5, 2017), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2816622.
29. See, e.g., Morris B. Hoffman et al., “An Empirical Study of Public Defender Effectiveness: Self-Selection by the ‘Marginally Indigent,’ ” 3 Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law 223 (2005) (finding that measures of public defender effectiveness may be confounded if public defender clients have less defensible cases).
30. James Anderson & Paul Heaton, “How Much Difference Does the Lawyer Make? The Effect of Defense Counsel on Murder Case Outcomes,” RAND Corporation and University of Pennsylvania Law School (Oct. 1, 2011), http://ssrn.com/abstract=1884379.
Acknowledgments
Our earliest conversations about public options began when Ganesh was visiting at Yale Law School, and they continued cross-country between Anne, at Yale, and Ganesh, at Vanderbilt University. We thank Deans Robert Post and Heather Gerken at Yale, Dean Chris Guthrie at Vanderbilt, and the Vanderbilt Program on Law and Government for their encouragement, support, and resources. In the later stages of this project, the Carnegie Corporation of New York offered generous and important backing through an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship.
A great thanks must also go out to the many people who read drafts of part or all of the book or who provided helpful comments during (sometimes very long) conversations: Bruce Ackerman, Rebecca Allensworth, Ian Ayres, Mehrsa Baradan, William Boyd, Paul Dempsey, Dan Epps, Franklin Foer, Ethan Gurwitz, Richard John, Jonathan Kanter, Lina Khan, Mike Konczal, Andy Koppelman, Matt Kozlov, Barry Lynn, Martha Minow, Julie Morgan, Sabeel Rahman, Morgan Ricks, Chris Serkin, Marshall Steinbaum, Maurice Stucke, Ramsi Woodcock, Tim Wu, Luigi Zingales, and participants in workshops at the law schools at Northwestern and Washington University. Quenna Stewart was invaluable in helping organize a roundtable at Vanderbilt, and Katie Choi, Ariel Dobkin, Laura Dolbow, Will Hudson, Brain Moore, Jeesoo Nam, Nathan Nash, Anderson Tuggle, and Elena Zarabozo provided research help.
The intrepid Chris Parris-Lamb championed our work, and Thomas LeBien was a pleasure to work with, as were Kathi Drummy, Louise Robbins, and Colleen Lanick at Harvard University Press. Finally, we thank our family and friends, who put up with hearing incessantly about the wonders of the Postal Service and public libraries.
Index
ACA. See Affordable Care Act (2010)
access as feature of public options, guaranteed and universal, 44–45, 66, 82
Adams, John Quincy, 165, 166
adverse selection, 105, 107, 140–141, 209, 212
Aetna, 215, 216, 241n8
Affordable Care Act (2010), 2–3, 57–58, 90, 202–203, 208–218. See also health care
Allyn, Bobby, 228
American Hospital Association, 204
American Medical Association, 206
America’s College Promise program, 163–164
America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), 215
annuity market, 104–105, 107, 139–141
Antitrust Paradox, The (Bork), 21
antitrust policies, 21, 64, 80
arbitration system, 48–49
Arizona, 153–154
Ashford University, 156
AT&T, 99, 226–227
automobile industry, 12, 46, 51, 212
banking, 20–21, 32; fringe banking sector, 169–172, 176, 178–180; postal system of, 4, 174–178, 179; private system of, 173–174; proposed public option for, 4, 82–83, 176–178; public loan argument on, 178–180
baseline public options, 27–29, 45, 73. See also specific industries
basic income, universal, 92–94
Baylor University, 203
broadband internet. See internet services
Buffett, Warren, 135, 136
bureaucratic incompetence and malfeasance, 71–74
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, 34, 214, 216
Bush, George W., 113, 207
California, 145, 188, 198, 232–233
CalSavers program, 145
Campaign for America’s Future, 211
Canada, 175
capture, as concept, 88–89
car insurance, 51, 212
Carnegie, Andrew, 100
Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, 122
charter schools, 115–117. See also education, K–12
check-cashing service, 169, 171
child care: dependent care tax credit for, 191–192, 266n25; examples of public option for, 196–197, 198–200; failure of market subsidies in, 187–190; failure of private marketplace in, 183–186; history of, 181–183; objections to public option for, 198–201; proposed public option for, 54–55, 192, 193–196, 201; public schools as, 193–194; of the U.S. military, 199–200
China, 175
citizenship and public options, 42–43
CitySeed, 68
civic education, 100. See also libraries
Clinton, Bill, 152, 206–207
Clinton, Hillary, 164
cognitive fade-out, 200–201
college. See higher education
Comcast, 224, 226
common-carrier regulation, 217
community associations, 33–34
community college, 151–152. See also higher education
competitive public options, 27–28, 38–40
constitutional right to counsel, 231–233
Corinthian College, 150–151, 157
corporate consolidation, 20–22
cream-skimming argument, 91–92, 244n1
credit reporting, 227–229
Crestline Hotels and Resorts, 15–16
currency, 48, 172, 173
day care. See child care
defined-benefit vs. defined-contribution plans, 14–15, 107, 134
democracy of public options, 42–43
dependent care tax credit, 191–192, 266n25. See also child care
deregulation, 18, 22. See also regulations
development subsidies for housing, 123
distortion argument, 74–78
Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), 188, 257n38
economic consolidation, 20–22
economic mobility, 31–32, 34–35
education, K–12, 3; charter schools, 115–117; civic education movement, 100; cream-skimming and, 91–92; mixed results of public option in, 110–112; as public child care, 193–194; public option in, 6–7, 26–27, 112–113, 160; residential segregation and, 112–113, 114–115; voucher program for, 117–119. See also higher education
Edward Jones, 106
Edwards, John, 210–211
Eldercare, 206. See also Medicare
Electric Power Board (EPB), 225
Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT), 116–117
employer-employee relationship, 15–16
employer-sponsored benefits, 11; health care, 12–15, 24–25, 132, 134, 203–205; retirement plans, 11, 12–15, 24–25, 107, 132, 134, 144, 146
employment programs, public option for, 229–231
entertainment market, 68
entrepreneurship lock, 36
Equifax, 227
E*Trade, 135
exit mechanism, 73
Experian, 227
family wage, 14, 16–17
Fannie Mae, 124
FedAccounts, 177–178
Federal Communications Commission (FCC), 69, 223–224, 226
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), 169
federal employee retirement savings plan. See Thrift Savings Plan (TSP)
Federal Housing Administration (FHA), 124
federalism, 54–55, 213
Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), 124
Federal Reserve, 173–174, 177–178
FedEx (Federal Express), 3, 56, 73, 97, 99
financial advisors, 135–137
“first dollar” scholarship, 163–164
Fissured Workplace, The (Weil), 16
food voucher program, 67–68, 242n1
for-profit school model, 19, 20, 33, 116–117, 149–151, 155
401(k) plans: employer-sponsored, 134, 144, 146; regulation of, 89; risks and failure of, 106, 130, 132, 136, 137, 138, 144; Thrift Savings Plan, 131. See also retirement savings
France, 175, 197–198
Franklin, Ben, 100, 165
free market economies, overview, 44–46
free vs. reasonable price options, 49–51
fringe banking sector, 169–172, 176, 178–180. See also banking
funding public options, 53–54
gas tax, 86
General Motors (GM), 12
geographic inequality, 41–42
Georgia, 152, 189
GI Bill, 120, 149, 152, 156. See also military services
Gideon, Clarence Earl, 231–232
Gideon v. Wainwright, 232
gig economy, 15–16
Government Accountability Office (GAO), 155, 156, 157, 170
government interference, 80–83
government-provided feature of public options, 45–48, 66, 69–70, 199
grants, subsidized, 39, 150, 164, 206, 226–227. See also higher education; voucher programs