Pros, cons, and opinions fill news sources.

As Congress gears up for a run at comprehensive health reform in the coming months, advocates and opponents in the public sector voice their opinions in newspapers, town meetings, blogs, and more.

Advocates of President Barack Obama's reform attempts say the plan must include an independent, public insurance option available to everyone before the plan can succeed. At least seven bills before Congress call for a national health system, with three proposing a single-payer system that would be publically funded but privately run (such as Medicare), according to a Bucks County Courier-Times article posted at www.phillyburbs.com.

Financing Stumbling Block Shows Its Head

Many healthcare advocates and lawmakers say the concept of a single-payer system is politically and financially unfeasible, but there is growing interest in Congress to create a public plan alternative that competes with private insurers. Supporters such as Robin Stelly, Health Care America field organizer, say a public option would provide a huge cost savings by eliminating duplication. They say a public health plan would have low, or virtually nonexistent, administrative costs compared with private plans, citing other government-sponsored plans that tend to be less expensive.

While programs such as Medicare seem like good role models on the surface, there is growing concern about quality consistency in the Medicare program and its beneficiaries facing steeper out-of-pocket costs. The same concerns make a public health plan a harder sell for Obama and other supporters, especially because funding for a near-national health system is unclear. Obama opposed making employer-provided health insurance subject to taxes, though some Democrats favor that idea to generate revenue, the Courier-Times article said.

Cooperation Announced, But Needs Watchdog

A recent press conference by the Obama Administration announced a new development in the healthcare reform effort and its potential costs: a coalition of health insurance, hospital, pharmaceutical, physician trade groups, and a major union promise the President that they will reduce the rate of future growth in healthcare costs by 1.5 percent per year for the next decade.

"I don't think there could be a more significant step to help struggling families and to help the federal budget than to reduce the growth rate of healthcare spending by 1.5 percentage points per year," an unnamed Senior Administration official said during the press conference, as reported by M.S. Bellows, Jr. with The Huffington Post online. "With regard to the federal budget ... the only way that we are going to restore the nation to a sound fiscal path over the long term is to reduce the growth rate in healthcare costs ..."

Bellows and others point out that the announcement centers on slightly reducing the rate of growth in healthcare costs, not a reduction in healthcare costs themselves.

Most (though not all) of the groups participating in the initiative have historically opposed healthcare reform, the Huffington Post article says. The Administration's officials gave no details regarding mechanisms that would be in place to ensure the healthcare entities keep their promise.

Several healthcare reform advocates said that without a tool to "regulate the insurance companies" the plan sounded a "bit naive," the Huffington Post continued. Lowering administrative costs, they added, was a noble objective that made political and economic sense. "But there is a reason none of these groups have done this already."