Under this option, the Secretary of Health and Human Services would establish and administer a public health insurance plan that would be offered through the exchanges, alongside private plans, starting in 2016. The public plan would have to charge premiums that fully covered its costs, including administrative expenses. The plan’s payment rates for physicians and other individual practitioners would be set 5 percent higher than Medicare’s rates in 2013 and would rise in later years to reflect estimated increases in physicians’ costs; those payment rates would not be subject to the future reductions required by Medicare’s sustainable growth rate formula.
Add a “Public Plan” to the Health Insurance Exchanges