To the editor: David Lazarus writes as if health insurance companies are the problem in healthcare. This results in higher prices that insurance companies must pay for their members. The Medicare option would not address this problem, since Medicare does not have to negotiate prices. A Medicare option would leverage much lower Medicare prices to offer new insurance products that would be 30% to 40% lower than what commercial insurance companies can negotiate in California’s concentrated provider markets. This is important to understand since, if we do not have a Medicare option in the near future, we need California policymakers to act now.

Source: Los Angeles Times November 15, 2020 11:03 UTC