There’s no competition in the health insurance marketplace without a public plan with low administrative costs, president Obama averred.

Today, President Obama will spell out his vision for health care reform before a special joint session of Congress.

The battle for healthcare legislation seems to have boiled down to a few fine points. The single most definitive point, which is also incurring the most aggressive behavior, is whether the legislation should include a public agency serving as insurer and including subsidies for our most disadvantaged citizens. So it’s the old classic question of whether I am my brother’s keeper once again challenging the two party system.

Will healthcare reform include a public health insurance plan to compete with private health insurance? President Obama campaigned on the promise of a public option, but over the past week he and his top advisers have repeatedly signaled that they aren’t willing to fight for it.

Health care reform Jeopardy question

Today’s hybrid Medicare system, in which a quarter of beneficiaries are enrolled in private Medicare Advantage programs, provides a laboratory for testing the core assumption of the “public option” concept: that competition from a public plan can keep profit-driven insurers “honest.”

It’s been said that 76% of the population of this country want the President and the Congress to reach consensus on our health care system. They want the current system reformed, want the reformation to include a public plan, want that public plan to be open to everybody from day one, and they want it now.

American healthcare and pharmaceutical companies put profit over patient. Their very structures defy their presumed mandate to provide serious and eventual health care to the taxpayers they contract with. The best remedy of our present health crisis is the universal single payer plan, but our representatives and media are so financially compromised by the addicted to outrageous profits insurance and pharmaceutical corporations, we Americans are in danger of yet another massive betrayal by the political, financial and media elite. At best a public option program, if passed, will be vulnerable to continued exploitation.

Progressives are demanding that Obama’s healthcare reform package include a public plan, aka a government-administered health insurance option for all. A good public plan would cover more people while cutting costs and improving care. The key committees in the House drew up a bill with a public option, but the Senate is much less friendly to the idea. The real test of a healthcare reform plan is whether it can pass the Senate, as the House Dems have the votes to pass whatever health reform bill is put before them.

Healthcare reform is back in the news, as legislators and interest groups spar over the promised public component of Obama’s healthcare plan.