Sebelius: Health Reform Puts Focus on Lower Costs, Better Choices

JIM LEHRER:

Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, Afghan children as smugglers, and the president and the media. That follows our Newsmaker interview about health reform with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Judy Woodruff spoke with her a short time ago.

JUDY WOODRUFF:

Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, thank you very much for joining us.

KATHLEEN SEBELIUS, Health and Human Services Secretary: Good to be with you, Judy.

JUDY WOODRUFF:

Let's talk first about the proposed government-run public health care plan. Now, the president said yesterday that he is not going to insist on this, and yet he was challenging private health insurers on their opposition to it. If he's in favor of it, why doesn't he insist on it?

KATHLEEN SEBELIUS:

Well, I think the president has made it clear that he wants serious ideas to be on the table and not at this point in the discussion draw lines in the sand.

Having said that, he's a pretty strong proponent of a new marketplace for those Americans who can't afford the coverage they have, don't like the coverage they have, or have no coverage at all, a marketplace that would have private plans standing side by side with a public option. Some competition and some choice for consumers he thinks is a very good thing, and so do I.

JUDY WOODRUFF:

Well, as you know, one of the alternatives now being discussed to this plan is a so-called co-op arrangement which would involve, I guess, a group of states putting a national option together that would — I guess where they would pool their purchasing power.

Now the debate is over how much say the government would have in the authority of such a co-op. Are you, is the administration drawing any lines in the sand on this conversation?

KATHLEEN SEBELIUS:

Well, I think the good news about Senator Conrad's proposal on co-ops is that we really have members of the Senate — and the same thing is going on, on the House side — coming to the table and saying, "We want to make this work. We understand the status quo is unacceptable. We understand we have to do something this year. And we also understand that an insurance monopoly with only private companies doesn't hold down costs."

And that's one of the president's bottom lines is, we have to have some control over costs which are bankrupting our families, making our companies less competitive, and, frankly, are unsustainable in the current economy.

Having some alternative to a private insurance monopoly is, I think, a good idea, will offer some choice and will offer some competition.