BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
Universal care better achieved with mandates than public option

Stuart Butler. "The Case Against: The public plan will unfairly crowd out private coverage". Heritage Foundation. July 28, 2009: "One argument is that a government-sponsored plan is needed so that Americans with modest income and chronic medical problems -- the kind of people who are literally uninsurable -- can be assured of getting coverage. [...] But this overlooks everything else that has already been agreed. There's bipartisan support for subsidies and health exchanges to assure portable, affordable coverage. Even the health insurance industry would accept revamped regulation to limit premium variation so that sicker people can get coverage. And we've made great progress in recent years with reinsurance and risk adjustment mechanisms to handle high-risk people. [...] A public plan does nothing to advance on this. It is anathema to many of the very people who are in agreement and just throws a monkey wrench into the discussion."
Public and private insurers can learn from each other

Jacob Hacker. "The case for public plan". The Institute for America's Future: "public and private plans can learn from each other as they exploit their strengths and remedy their weaknesses. Expanded coverage of prescription drugs by Medicare HMOs, for example, demonstrated the feasibility of drug coverage for the elderly and helped to increase political pressure for drug coverage for all people with Medicare. The development of performance measures for Medicare private plans provided a template for projects testing comparable measures under the public Medicare plan. Similarly, innovations in coordinating care for elders with chronic illness in private plans have provided a useful foundation for care-coordination demonstrations in the public Medicare plan."
Public option is needed because regulating insurers is insufficient

Paul Krugman. "The public option as a signal". New York Times. August 17, 2009: "to have a workable system without the public option, you need to have effective regulation of the insurers. Given the realities of our money-dominated politics, you really have to worry whether that can be done — which is a reason to have a more or less automatic mechanism [public insurance] for disciplining the industry."
Insurers/conservatives oppose public insurance because it works

Robert Reich. "Why critics of a public option for healthcare are wrong". Salon. June 24, 2009: "[A public option] does crack the door open for expanding the number of Americans who get their health insurance through the government. And this is what terrifies the insurance companies and conservatives. Their fear is that it will actually work. If the program operates well, more and more people will make the rational decision to choose it over private insurance (what we're supposed to do in a market, after all) and the insurance companies will lose customers."
Status quo of insurance company control is unacceptable

Barack Obama. "Why We Need Health Care Reform". New York Times. August 15, 2009: "In the coming weeks, the cynics and the naysayers will continue to exploit fear and concerns for political gain. But for all the scare tactics out there, what’s truly scary — truly risky — is the prospect of doing nothing. If we maintain the status quo [of health care dominated by health insurance companies under government regulations], we will continue to see 14,000 Americans lose their health insurance every day. Premiums will continue to skyrocket. Our deficit will continue to grow. And insurance companies will continue to profit by discriminating against sick people."
Public health insurance is more reliable and less stressful

2009 Statement by the American Nurses Association: "What is lacking in our current health care system, driven by for-profit, private insurance companies, is the reliability and predictability of accessible, affordable care. Many people have encountered the unpleasant reality that they can be denied care when they need it most, or lose coverage when they can least afford it.Private insurers can discriminate based on preexisting conditions, health status, gender, age, claims history, or other factors. In addition, in this unstable employment market, the loss of a job often leads to loss of health coverage, as insurance becomes less affordable."[6]
Insurance industry has sufficient competition w/o public option

Karl Rove. "How to Stop Socialized Health Care" Wall Street Journal. June 11, 2009: "Advocates say a government-run insurance program is needed to provide competition for private health insurance. But 1,300 companies sell health insurance plans. That's competition enough. The results of robust private competition to provide the Medicare drug benefit underscore this. When it was approved, the Congressional Budget Office estimated it would cost $74 billion a year by 2008. Nearly 100 providers deliver the drug benefit, competing on better benefits, more choices, and lower prices. So the actual cost was $44 billion in 2008 -- nearly 41% less than predicted. No government plan was needed to guarantee competition's benefits."
Healthcare reform/regulation can succeed without public option

Stuart Butler. "The Case Against: The public plan will unfairly crowd out private coverage". Heritage Foundation. July 28, 2009: "One argument is that a government-sponsored plan is needed so that Americans with modest income and chronic medical problems -- the kind of people who are literally uninsurable -- can be assured of getting coverage. [...] But this overlooks everything else that has already been agreed. There's bipartisan support for subsidies and health exchanges to assure portable, affordable coverage. Even the health insurance industry would accept revamped regulation to limit premium variation so that sicker people can get coverage. And we've made great progress in recent years with reinsurance and risk adjustment mechanisms to handle high-risk people. [...] A public plan does nothing to advance on this. It is anathema to many of the very people who are in agreement and just throws a monkey wrench into the discussion."
A public insurance plan can spearhead quality improvements

Jacob Hacker. "The case for public plan". The Institute for America's Future: "over the last generation, public insurance has pioneered new payment and quality-improvement methods that have frequently set the standard for private plans. More important, it has the potential to carry out these vital tasks much more effectively in the future, using information technology, large databases of practices and outcomes, and new payment approaches and care-coordination strategies. Indeed, a new public plan could spearhead improvement of existing public programs as well as private plans."
Public insurance option is a reasonable compromise.

The public insurance option is a compromise between the very prominent extremes of those that want the continuation of the status quo - with solely private insurance companies in charge of health care - and those that advocate for a single-payer system, in which insurance companies simply cease to exist. It is therefore, unreasonable to argue that such a half-way compromise (that concedes the possibility of destroying the insurance industry altogether with a single-payer system) goes to far. It is a reasonable compromise that should not be seen as a deal-breaker by opponents of government programs.
Public insurance would destroy private insurance industry

Karl Rove. "How to Stop Socialized Health Care" Wall Street Journal. June 11, 2009: "government-run health insurance would crater the private insurance market, forcing most Americans onto the government plan. The Lewin Group estimates 70% of people with private insurance -- 120 million Americans -- will quickly lose what they now get from private companies and be forced onto the government-run rolls as businesses decide it is more cost-effective for them to drop coverage. They'd be happy to shift some of the expense -- and all of the administration headaches -- to Washington. And once the private insurance market has been dismantled it will be gone."
Public option is next best option to single-payer health care

Paul Waldman. "The Public Option and the Hope of Health Care Reform". American Prospect. December 23, 2008: "Although the public option wasn't the topic of a great deal of discussion during the campaign, for many progressives it amounts to a beautiful jewel hidden amidst a pile of compromise and disappointment. Ask average progressives what they think ought to be done about health care, and many will reply, 'Well, a single-payer system would obviously be the best thing. But since that's politically impossible…'."
Public insurance less agile/innovative than private insurance

Michael J. Critelli, who served as the chief executive at Pitney Bowes for 11 years, where he was an innovator in employer-based health care: "I cannot imagine that any public health plan operated under the same rules as a private insurance plan could be competitive. The public plan would be subject to all sorts of political interventions and would be required to delay making changes in health plans until it had solicited extensive public comments. It would not be allowed to operate as flexibly with respect to labor work rules or to invest in much technology innovation as a private insurance carrier."[7]
Public option monopoly squeezes health care suppliers, doctors

Gregory Mankiw. "The pitfalls of the public option". New York Times. June 27, 2009: "Which raises the question: Would the existence of a dominant government provider of health insurance be good or bad? [...] A dominant government insurer [...] could potentially keep costs down by squeezing the suppliers of health care. This cost control works not by fostering honest competition but by thwarting it. [...] If the government has a dominant role in buying the services of doctors and other health care providers, it can force prices down. Once the government is virtually the only game in town, health care providers will have little choice but to take whatever they can get. It is no wonder that the American Medical Association opposes the public option."
Pursuit of bipartisan reform should not hold up public option

Paul Waldman. "The 10 dumbest arguments against health-care reform." The American Prospect. July 28, 2009: "What we really need is a 'bipartisan' health-reform bill -- and if Democrats act properly, they could get one. The myth that "bipartisan" legislation works better than partisan legislation is widespread, but virtually no real evidence supports it. [...] More important, Republicans are not going to vote for this health-care reform, no matter what the final bill looks like. Chances are it will get zero Republican votes in the House and maybe two Republican votes in the Senate, tops. Anyone who thinks more optimistically has been partaking of too many free samples from pharmaceutical lobbyists."
Public insurance leads to socialized medicine, rationing, long-lines

"The End of Private Health Insurance". Wall Street Journal (editorial). April 13, 2009: "Once government takes over the majority of U.S. health-care liabilities [with a public option], it can either provide every service at huge and growing cost, or it can ration services. People who need an MRI or hip replacement or whatever will face waiting lines. Medical innovation will be at the mercy of the price controls hashed out in Washington."
Government will favor public insurance; no level playing-field

Stuart Butler. "The Case Against: The public plan will unfairly crowd out private coverage". Heritage Foundation. July 28, 2009: "It's simply impossible to believe the claims by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and others that Congress really will do nothing to disrupt the level playing field by favoring the public plan. With Congress as both umpire and a team manager, one thing is clear: it will favor its own team. The result is the public plan will unfairly crowd out private coverage."
Public option jeopardizes passing healthcare reform legislation

Stuart Butler. "The Case Against: The public plan will unfairly crowd out private coverage". Heritage Foundation. July 28, 2009: "I've spent the last 30 years trying to achieve affordable health coverage for all Americans, so it's frustrating to see the obsession with a 'public plan' making it impossible for reasonable people from both parties to come together. 'The fixation on a public plan is bizarre and counterproductive,' The Washington Post put it recently in an editorial. 'It would be a huge mistake for the left to torpedo reform over this question.' [...] Why does such a seemingly benign idea pose such a dire threat? Because supporters are disingenuous about their real goals and about how it would really work. The arguments for a public option as the only way to achieve certain objectives just don't stack up."
Public health insurance creates two-tiers of quality

Ronald Bailey. "The beginning of the end of private health insurance". Reason. June 9, 2009: "The best result of creating a parallel public insurance scheme is that the United States would end up with an explicit two-tier medical system in which privately insured Americans have better access to better medical care. Such two-tier health care systems already exist in countries with national health care schemes such as the United Kingdom and Germany. In the United Kingdom, more and more Britons are opting for private health insurance instead of remaining with that country's National Health Service. Privately insured Americans would get higher quality health care, but because the market for medical innovation would be smaller, everybody will get worse care than they would otherwise have received had most health care not been nationalized."
Public insurance meets moral obligation to insure the uninsured

Ronald R. Mercer, Bullhead City, Ariz. "America, its uninsured need public option". Las Vegas Sun. Aug. 24, 2009: "A public option health care agency proposed by many Democrats, and an important part of President Barack Obama’s health reform plan, needs a mission statement. It must simply read: 'Provide voluntary health insurance for the uninsured. Leave no one behind.' [...] This is a high ground statement — moral, honorable and American. It is not socialism to care and provide for an American minority, the uninsured. It’s simply the right thing to do. Just as Americans don’t turn people away from hospital emergency rooms, Americans don’t leave people behind when it comes to health care insurance."
Healthcare reform/regulation can succeed without public option

Stuart Butler. "The Case Against: The public plan will unfairly crowd out private coverage". Heritage Foundation. July 28, 2009: "There's bipartisan support for subsidies and health exchanges to assure portable, affordable coverage. Even the health insurance industry would accept revamped regulation to limit premium variation so that sicker people can get coverage. And we've made great progress in recent years with reinsurance and risk adjustment mechanisms to handle high-risk people. [...] A public plan does nothing to advance on this. It is anathema to many of the very people who are in agreement and just throws a monkey wrench into the discussion."
Public insurance would stifle medical innovation and advancement

John Lechleiter. "Health-Care Reform and the 'Innovation Test'" Wall Street Journal. May 14, 2009: "I've spent three decades working in or near biopharmaceutical research and development. During that time, I've witnessed breakthroughs as diverse as biosynthetic human insulin, bone-forming agents for treating osteoporosis, new cancer therapies, and a first-ever treatment for severe sepsis go from glimmers of intuition to everyday medical tools. [...] Inventions such as these -- and my list includes only the partial output of the company I work for -- have transformed the most basic expectations of human life in the last century. Today, the average life expectancy at birth in the U.S. is 78; when my mother was born in 1928 it was 57. (She's still in great health, by the way.) [...] Even in the last two decades of the 20th century, new medicines accounted for 40% of the increase in life expectancy in more than 50 countries, according to a recent study by Columbia University economist Frank Lichtenberg. In other words, for every year that life expectancy has increased, five months can be attributed to the availability of new medicines. [...] U.S.-based private industry is the heart and soul of this innovation drama, investing $58 billion in research and development for new medicines in 2007 alone. [...] it is vital to all of us that we insist that reform proposals pass the 'innovation test.' Providing insurance to millions of Americans through a government-run plan would fail the test. Similar efforts around the world have led to rationing of health care and created hurdles between patients and the most advanced treatments. On the other hand, innovation would remain reasonably secure if universal access were achieved through tax credits and government subsidies that allow patients to choose from a variety of private health-financing options."
Public insurance is a good alternative for uninsured

Richard Kirsch, National Campaign Manager for Health Care for America Now! "Three Reasons for the Choice of a Public Health Insurance Plan". May 15, 2009: "Sure, some people are satisfied with their current health insurance. But the millions of Americans who are tired of increasing costs and decreasing benefits should have the chance to opt into a program that will offer affordable, quality care, says Health Care for America Now's Richard Kirsch."
Public insurance option is less costly than private insurance

"Why The Public Health Insurance Option Is Worth Fighting For". Think Progress. August 19th, 2009: "Real health care reform that includes a new public health insurance option could adopt the kind of payment reforms that would start to “hold down long-term growth in health spending' and encourage providers to deliver care more efficiently. We know that premiums in the public option would be about 10 percent lower and that a real robust plan that piggy backs off of Medicare’s infrastructure could save us somewhere between $75 billion and $150 billion over 10 years."
Public insurance delivers same quality insurance at a lower price

Jacob Hacker. "The case for public plan". The Institute for America's Future: "COST-CONTROL ADVANTAGES OF PUBLIC INSURANCE. It is often assumed that private health plans are much more efficient than public health insurance. Yet a range of studies demonstrate that public insurance is able to provide a given level of benefits for less than they would cost through private insurance. Lower administrative costs and the ability to bargain for lower service and drug prices chiefly explain this advantage, as does the obvious lack of a profit margin in public programs. These features of public insurance not only allow it to offer the same coverage for less than private plans. They also, the evidence suggests, allow it to better restrain the increase in costs over time while preserving inclusive coverage."
Public option weakens private insurers, forcing many out of their plans

"The End of Private Health Insurance". Wall Street Journal (editorial). April 13, 2009: "In a recent analysis, Lewin estimates that enrollment in the public option will reach 131 million people if it is open to everyone and pays Medicare rates. Fully 119 million people will shift out of -- or lose -- private coverage. Everything depends on the payment levels that Congress adopts, as well as the size of the eligible pool. But even if a public option available to all takes the highly improbable step of paying at some midpoint between private and Medicare rates, nearly 68 million people will still be crowded out of private insurance."
Public insurance option has lower administrative costs

Robert Reich. "Why critics of a public option for healthcare are wrong". Salon. June 24, 2009: "[the critics say] the public plan starts off with an unfair advantage because it's likely to have lower administrative costs. That may be true -- Medicare's administrative costs per enrollee are a small fraction of typical private insurance costs -- but here again, why exactly is this unfair? Isn't one of the goals of healthcare cost containment to lower administrative costs? If the public option pushes private plans to trim their bureaucracies and become more efficient, that's fine."
Employers may dump their employees into public insurance

Stuart Butler. "The Case Against: The public plan will unfairly crowd out private coverage". Heritage Foundation. July 28, 2009: "[With public insurance] there would actually be big changes for many already insured people. Faced with a low-cost public option, many employers would simply close down their existing plan and push their employees into the public plan. Remember that Wal-Mart encouraged eligible employees to sign up for Medicaid, until states and unions thwarted them. All serious analysts agree that many Americans would find themselves dumped into the public plan." Because a public plan would have limited insurance, the public plan may not be able to cover all these people dumped by their employers. In the end, therefore, a public plan may leave more people without insurance, employer-provided or otherwise. Or, it may just entirely negate itself by simply transferring insured individuals from private plans to a public one, leaving little room for the remaining uninsured.
Employers may dump their employees into public insurance

Stuart Butler. "The Case Against: The public plan will unfairly crowd out private coverage". Heritage Foundation. July 28, 2009: "But there would actually be big changes for many already insured people. Faced with a low-cost public option, many employers would simply close down their existing plan and push their employees into the public plan. Remember that Wal-Mart encouraged eligible employees to sign up for Medicaid, until states and unions thwarted them. All serious analysts agree that many Americans would find themselves dumped into the public plan."
Public option cuts obscene profits of insurance establishment

Dave Johnson. "Health Care: Public Option Is A Must". The Huffington Post. June 6, 2009: "The ONLY reason there is consideration of continuing the failed, greedy, destructive corporate insurance system is because the few who get rich off of it are paying off politicians to keep things they way they are. [...] This is about providing what is best for the people, not about watching out for corporate interests and the profits that get funneled up to a few people at the top."
Public insurance will be paid for by taxes on businesses

"The End of Private Health Insurance". Wall Street Journal (editorial). April 13, 2009: "Mr. Obama's proposal would be open to everyone and necessitate a huge permanent increase in government spending as a share of the economy. Medicare and Medicaid alone account for 4% of GDP today and will rise to 9% by 2035, according to the Congressional Budget Office. CBO estimates that individual and corporate income tax rates would have to rise by about 90% to finance the projected increase in spending through 2050 -- without the new middle-class entitlement."