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The Public Option: How to Expand Freedom, Increase Opportunity, and Promote Equality
A solution to inequalities wherever we look―in health care, secure retirement, education―is as close as the public library. Or the post office, community pool, or local elementary school. Public options―reasonably priced government-provided services that coexist with private options―are all around us, ready to increase opportunity, expand freedom, and reawaken civic engagement if we will only let them.
Whenever you go to your local public library, send mail via the post office, or visit Yosemite, you are taking advantage of a longstanding American the public option. Some of the most useful and beloved institutions in American life are public options―yet they are seldom celebrated as such. These government-supported opportunities coexist peaceably alongside private options, ensuring equal access and expanding opportunity for all.
Ganesh Sitaraman and Anne Alstott challenge decades of received wisdom about the proper role of government and consider the vast improvements that could come from the expansion of public options. Far from illustrating the impossibility of effective government services, as their critics claim, public options hold the potential to transform American civic life, offering a wealth of solutions to seemingly intractable problems, from housing shortages to the escalating cost of health care.
Imagine a low-cost, high-quality public option for child care. Or an extension of the excellent Thrift Savings Plan for federal employees to all Americans. Or every person having access to an account at the Federal Reserve Bank, with no fees and no minimums. From broadband internet to higher education, The Public Option reveals smart new ways to meet pressing public needs while spurring healthy competition. More effective than vouchers or tax credits, public options could offer us all fairer choices and greater security.
Whenever you go to your local public library, send mail via the post office, or visit Yosemite, you are taking advantage of a longstanding American the public option. Some of the most useful and beloved institutions in American life are public options―yet they are seldom celebrated as such. These government-supported opportunities coexist peaceably alongside private options, ensuring equal access and expanding opportunity for all.
Ganesh Sitaraman and Anne Alstott challenge decades of received wisdom about the proper role of government and consider the vast improvements that could come from the expansion of public options. Far from illustrating the impossibility of effective government services, as their critics claim, public options hold the potential to transform American civic life, offering a wealth of solutions to seemingly intractable problems, from housing shortages to the escalating cost of health care.
Imagine a low-cost, high-quality public option for child care. Or an extension of the excellent Thrift Savings Plan for federal employees to all Americans. Or every person having access to an account at the Federal Reserve Bank, with no fees and no minimums. From broadband internet to higher education, The Public Option reveals smart new ways to meet pressing public needs while spurring healthy competition. More effective than vouchers or tax credits, public options could offer us all fairer choices and greater security.
296 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 2019
16 people are currently reading
319 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
August 7, 2019
Rating this book is difficult.
I want to give it 5* as it is an important subject, I agree with their conclusions, it is readable for a layperson and comprehensive.
BUT it ain’t gonna convince anyone who does not agree. Given the title, it’s hard to imagine a conservative reader even picking up the book.
They do discuss arguments against the public option and problems with it but not enough to change anyone’s mind. Maybe that isn’t the intention. Perhaps it is to spread ideas among receptive minds. It definitely gives some tools to debate the issues with grumpy fathers-in-law at family gatherings.
I want to give it 5* as it is an important subject, I agree with their conclusions, it is readable for a layperson and comprehensive.
BUT it ain’t gonna convince anyone who does not agree. Given the title, it’s hard to imagine a conservative reader even picking up the book.
They do discuss arguments against the public option and problems with it but not enough to change anyone’s mind. Maybe that isn’t the intention. Perhaps it is to spread ideas among receptive minds. It definitely gives some tools to debate the issues with grumpy fathers-in-law at family gatherings.
August 7, 2019
It's a good book, a necessary book.
It doesn't go into policy nitty gritty boring details, but gives enough of the reasons behind how a public option for many areas in our lives either work (libraries, postal service) or could work (retirement funding, health care). The authors are honest about how some public options work better than others in real life.
Recommend, especially in this primary season.
It doesn't go into policy nitty gritty boring details, but gives enough of the reasons behind how a public option for many areas in our lives either work (libraries, postal service) or could work (retirement funding, health care). The authors are honest about how some public options work better than others in real life.
Recommend, especially in this primary season.
October 4, 2019
I love the idea of public options and I am so glad that these two scholars (Sitaraman and Alstott) have compiled all the possibilities of public options and the benefits and drawbacks. I reviewed this book in an early form and read the finished version again and I learned a lot both times.
September 11, 2019
A must-read for anyone interested in a political middle ground in America.
Sitaraman and Alstott expertly organize multiple major social issues into a workable plan that benefits Americans. Books like this should start a conversation about needed revolution in the grossly poor functioning of health care, higher education, banking, child care and retirement.
Sitaraman and Alstott expertly organize multiple major social issues into a workable plan that benefits Americans. Books like this should start a conversation about needed revolution in the grossly poor functioning of health care, higher education, banking, child care and retirement.
February 22, 2022
While this book got me thinking, I feel like it presented an unrealistic, oversimplified view of public policy options. The ideas are all great in theory, however considering how our gov. operates, many could not work in practice—much less even make it through legislation in the first place—and are radically optimistic (I mean like a federally-operated public option for childcare?? Come on.) It did convince me that public options are generally a solid idea though, in instances when markets are weak and/or fail. As long as there is reasonable demand for it and it isn’t costing the gov a fortune, why shouldn’t we have a government-run public option competing with private enterprises?? I feel like it’s just common sense and protects the best interests of consumers?? Idk fight me in the comments if you disagree. Overall decent book.👍
✨My thoughts//take aways from the book✨:
✨pls don’t take them seriously💖 I am just trying to synthesize what I read✨😎
-banking. We should (and could possibly reasonably achieve) a public banking option. It seems like it would be pretty inexpensive to implement and it gives those in extreme poverty a safe place to keep money, have access to debit cards as opposed to using only cash, as well as minimizes the unnecessary fees that private banks charge. As of 2015, 7% of households were completed “unbanked”so this is a pretty exigent issue. They propose to offer the public option via post office, something that has worked historically. They also propose there should be a max account balance of a couple thousand dollars. Cool.
-retirement. We need to save for it. Social security is barely enough for a senior citizen to make ends meet. This book proposes another public option to supplement ss: public option for personal retirement accounts. Sounds like a good idea to me b/c it is inexpensive (almost free) to implement, as it is literally just a personal retirement account exclusive from your employer which you would automatically be opted in to contributing to by working. It would take a certain percentage of your check (~3-5%) and deposit it into a personal retirement acc. that would be invested in a gov. managed mutual fund (or possibly your choice between a couple of gov. managed mutual funds). I feel like this is a fairly non-offensive public option because it incentivizes basic retirement savings—something most people have a pretty strong stake in—with the option to opt out at any time. Tbh I feel like the only controversial part about this would/should b how the mutual funds are managed.
-neoliberalism. I did not know what it was prior to reading this book but now that I have a vague understanding of what it is I DO have a superiority complex. 😌 Jk but I can’t believe it took me this long to understand that it’s basically just people who have faith in market power! (Aka people who believe we should let the economy just do its thing aka proponents of laissez-faire capitalism.) That’s my understanding of the concept at least. Maybe I will have to read a book specifically about this now,,
-healthcare. I don’t really know that much about healthcare policy and I feel like the one chapter written in this book was kind of lackluster,, it really should’ve set out to define stuff before it started talking about policies & I don’t think that the last 30+ years of healthcare policy are that easy to cram into a couple of pages lending me to believe that this was a semi-myopic account of what actually happened?? I agree that a public option for healthcare would be nice to have though, and would promote the broader social welfare of America!🇺🇸🤠🤩
-additional public options mentioned: broadband & credit reporting. I feel like both of these are not too much of an ask to have a public option for + they promote freedom, equality, and harm no one (with the exception of big corporations that have a chokehold on their respective markets.)
✨My thoughts//take aways from the book✨:
✨pls don’t take them seriously💖 I am just trying to synthesize what I read✨😎
-banking. We should (and could possibly reasonably achieve) a public banking option. It seems like it would be pretty inexpensive to implement and it gives those in extreme poverty a safe place to keep money, have access to debit cards as opposed to using only cash, as well as minimizes the unnecessary fees that private banks charge. As of 2015, 7% of households were completed “unbanked”so this is a pretty exigent issue. They propose to offer the public option via post office, something that has worked historically. They also propose there should be a max account balance of a couple thousand dollars. Cool.
-retirement. We need to save for it. Social security is barely enough for a senior citizen to make ends meet. This book proposes another public option to supplement ss: public option for personal retirement accounts. Sounds like a good idea to me b/c it is inexpensive (almost free) to implement, as it is literally just a personal retirement account exclusive from your employer which you would automatically be opted in to contributing to by working. It would take a certain percentage of your check (~3-5%) and deposit it into a personal retirement acc. that would be invested in a gov. managed mutual fund (or possibly your choice between a couple of gov. managed mutual funds). I feel like this is a fairly non-offensive public option because it incentivizes basic retirement savings—something most people have a pretty strong stake in—with the option to opt out at any time. Tbh I feel like the only controversial part about this would/should b how the mutual funds are managed.
-neoliberalism. I did not know what it was prior to reading this book but now that I have a vague understanding of what it is I DO have a superiority complex. 😌 Jk but I can’t believe it took me this long to understand that it’s basically just people who have faith in market power! (Aka people who believe we should let the economy just do its thing aka proponents of laissez-faire capitalism.) That’s my understanding of the concept at least. Maybe I will have to read a book specifically about this now,,
-healthcare. I don’t really know that much about healthcare policy and I feel like the one chapter written in this book was kind of lackluster,, it really should’ve set out to define stuff before it started talking about policies & I don’t think that the last 30+ years of healthcare policy are that easy to cram into a couple of pages lending me to believe that this was a semi-myopic account of what actually happened?? I agree that a public option for healthcare would be nice to have though, and would promote the broader social welfare of America!🇺🇸🤠🤩
-additional public options mentioned: broadband & credit reporting. I feel like both of these are not too much of an ask to have a public option for + they promote freedom, equality, and harm no one (with the exception of big corporations that have a chokehold on their respective markets.)
February 22, 2023
This book was surprising in several ways, none of them good.
Anne Alstott and Ganesh Sitaraman are both academics at R1 universities. They both study public policy in some form, and they write this book advocating for the use of the public option (surprise!). What is strange about this book is that, they do not actually spend that much time talking about the public options that they are advocating for, but rather spend much of the book attacking neoliberalism (or at least their poor understanding of neoliberalism).
Their attacks on neoliberalism are not only off topic, but also off base. And finally, though they do propose some reasonable usages of the public option, they do not support these arguments with data.
First, this book presents itself as advocating for the public option. I did not go through, page by page, and track it, but it felt like more space was devoted to attacking neoliberalism than to advocating for a public option. It is fine to attack neoliberalism, there is certainly much to criticize in neoliberalism, but they should be intellectually honest and just write a book that does that, rather than cloacking their attack on neoliberalism within a book that claims it is going to advance arguments for the public option. Second, their attack on neoliberalism is really shoddy.
They sometimes seem to miss the large holes in their arguments. Here is one passage: “All organizations—government, churches, colleges, private businesses—are made up of people, and people can be petty, power hungry, incompetent, lazy, and inefficient wherever they work. There’s nothing special about government in that sense. You might respond that government employees often have civil service protections that keep them from getting fired. True, and that is an important difference. But anyone who has worked in a private firm knows that just because people can be fired, it doesn’t necessarily mean they will be fired--and it doesn’t necessarily mean they will be incentivized to work to the best of their abilities. Office politics, favoritism, and bias can insulate incompetence in any setting. The reality is that in some regards, the differences between government bureaucracy and other institutions are not as stark as one might think. Indeed, when we look at private firms, we find a lot of the same hassles and irritations that afflict public bureaucracy--and some others, too. Big companies are often loath to innovate (just ask Blockbuster how its business is going).”
Of course, this passage misses the point. It says that private businesses make mistakes, just like governments, and that they are not all that different. True, but no neoliberal (so far as I know) ever said that businesses do not make mistakes. The neoliberal argument is that businesses pay dearly for their mistakes, whereas government bureaucrats often do not. They bring up Blockbuster as their example, but they seem to be blind to the fact that Blockbuster went bankrupt. The FBI was not disbanded when it failed to connect the dots on September 11th, the SEC did not get reorganized (much) when it missed the 2008 crisis. They ignore the obvious implications of their argument, that government organizations are markedly different from private ones.
In another place, they complain that the neoliberal approach to education, which involves government subsidizing for-profit colleges, has failed because these for-profit colleges often lure students into debt traps. Of course, a neoliberal would criticize the government subsidies. To say the neoliberal approach has failed is to completely fail to understand what neoliberalism is. Instead, the authors construct a strawman argument around their imagined form of neoliberalism.
Third, when they do drop the shoddy attacks on neoliberalism and get to their policy recommendations, I found myself intrigued by what they were advocating, but also very off put by the fact that they had little data to support their argument. I thought these folks were wonks. I hate to get all Jerry McGuire on them but SHOW ME THE DATA, SHOW ME THE NUMBERS! They have some intriguing solutions, particularly the idea of making the Federal Government’s Thrift Savings Plan a retirement plan available to the whole public. However, they fail to successfully make the case for their proposed solutions because they just do not have enough data to back it up.
Read 66%.
Anne Alstott and Ganesh Sitaraman are both academics at R1 universities. They both study public policy in some form, and they write this book advocating for the use of the public option (surprise!). What is strange about this book is that, they do not actually spend that much time talking about the public options that they are advocating for, but rather spend much of the book attacking neoliberalism (or at least their poor understanding of neoliberalism).
Their attacks on neoliberalism are not only off topic, but also off base. And finally, though they do propose some reasonable usages of the public option, they do not support these arguments with data.
First, this book presents itself as advocating for the public option. I did not go through, page by page, and track it, but it felt like more space was devoted to attacking neoliberalism than to advocating for a public option. It is fine to attack neoliberalism, there is certainly much to criticize in neoliberalism, but they should be intellectually honest and just write a book that does that, rather than cloacking their attack on neoliberalism within a book that claims it is going to advance arguments for the public option. Second, their attack on neoliberalism is really shoddy.
They sometimes seem to miss the large holes in their arguments. Here is one passage: “All organizations—government, churches, colleges, private businesses—are made up of people, and people can be petty, power hungry, incompetent, lazy, and inefficient wherever they work. There’s nothing special about government in that sense. You might respond that government employees often have civil service protections that keep them from getting fired. True, and that is an important difference. But anyone who has worked in a private firm knows that just because people can be fired, it doesn’t necessarily mean they will be fired--and it doesn’t necessarily mean they will be incentivized to work to the best of their abilities. Office politics, favoritism, and bias can insulate incompetence in any setting. The reality is that in some regards, the differences between government bureaucracy and other institutions are not as stark as one might think. Indeed, when we look at private firms, we find a lot of the same hassles and irritations that afflict public bureaucracy--and some others, too. Big companies are often loath to innovate (just ask Blockbuster how its business is going).”
Of course, this passage misses the point. It says that private businesses make mistakes, just like governments, and that they are not all that different. True, but no neoliberal (so far as I know) ever said that businesses do not make mistakes. The neoliberal argument is that businesses pay dearly for their mistakes, whereas government bureaucrats often do not. They bring up Blockbuster as their example, but they seem to be blind to the fact that Blockbuster went bankrupt. The FBI was not disbanded when it failed to connect the dots on September 11th, the SEC did not get reorganized (much) when it missed the 2008 crisis. They ignore the obvious implications of their argument, that government organizations are markedly different from private ones.
In another place, they complain that the neoliberal approach to education, which involves government subsidizing for-profit colleges, has failed because these for-profit colleges often lure students into debt traps. Of course, a neoliberal would criticize the government subsidies. To say the neoliberal approach has failed is to completely fail to understand what neoliberalism is. Instead, the authors construct a strawman argument around their imagined form of neoliberalism.
Third, when they do drop the shoddy attacks on neoliberalism and get to their policy recommendations, I found myself intrigued by what they were advocating, but also very off put by the fact that they had little data to support their argument. I thought these folks were wonks. I hate to get all Jerry McGuire on them but SHOW ME THE DATA, SHOW ME THE NUMBERS! They have some intriguing solutions, particularly the idea of making the Federal Government’s Thrift Savings Plan a retirement plan available to the whole public. However, they fail to successfully make the case for their proposed solutions because they just do not have enough data to back it up.
Read 66%.
September 30, 2022
To be honest, I only read the healthcare portions of this book - so only focused on what the two authors offered that might improve our broken healthcare system. Not much! They dance around the word socialism like it could jump off the page and bite the reader. For two highly educated and respected scholars/lawyers and whatever, the book flap's claim that this is "fresh thinking" I beg to disagree.
This is like every other so-called idea on how to avoid that s....ism word when it is all around us. We provide congress with all of the benefits that might come with a totally revised system. But we can't because - forgive me the full list is too long of greedy influencers who don't give a fig about yours or my health and even less about our care. To name a few: the whining AMA, medical cartels, private investors, hospitals chains, Big Pharma - it's gotten really big - and those devils running the private health insurance biz.
And if these two who gave us the main idea and a few tools - very few - think that the interests listed above (and many more) are going to let the public option onto the scene without MASSIVE amounts of frightening TV ads, social media companies, payouts to congress and in cahoots with the oligarchs who are running the show - they are asleep at the wheel. I am willing to temper their optimism given that it was published in 2019 before the fan was turned on and all manner of excrement hit it. As many insured Americans (in one form or another) are carrying debt, some devastating, as those going without - welcome to our world Ganesh and Anne - its brutal out here.
Maybe it would have been an even bigger service to write a book about how to break down the bias and lies around socialism and the idea of universal health care and really contribute to the voices, like mine and many others, who hope that after a total collapse from greed and incompetence and corruption, a universal system - with patients at the table for the first time - will become a reality. You know - like much of the rest of the world.
This is like every other so-called idea on how to avoid that s....ism word when it is all around us. We provide congress with all of the benefits that might come with a totally revised system. But we can't because - forgive me the full list is too long of greedy influencers who don't give a fig about yours or my health and even less about our care. To name a few: the whining AMA, medical cartels, private investors, hospitals chains, Big Pharma - it's gotten really big - and those devils running the private health insurance biz.
And if these two who gave us the main idea and a few tools - very few - think that the interests listed above (and many more) are going to let the public option onto the scene without MASSIVE amounts of frightening TV ads, social media companies, payouts to congress and in cahoots with the oligarchs who are running the show - they are asleep at the wheel. I am willing to temper their optimism given that it was published in 2019 before the fan was turned on and all manner of excrement hit it. As many insured Americans (in one form or another) are carrying debt, some devastating, as those going without - welcome to our world Ganesh and Anne - its brutal out here.
Maybe it would have been an even bigger service to write a book about how to break down the bias and lies around socialism and the idea of universal health care and really contribute to the voices, like mine and many others, who hope that after a total collapse from greed and incompetence and corruption, a universal system - with patients at the table for the first time - will become a reality. You know - like much of the rest of the world.
Read
May 10, 2020Unstarred review because I've had the pleasure to work with Ganesh a few times, and I admire his work enough that a starred review would contribute no information content.
This book is a breezy, accessible, and compelling case for the value of a public option, which "provides an important service at a reasonable cost, and it coexists, quite peaceably, with one or more private options offering the same service," for a variety of modern needs. Covering retirement, healthcare, childcare, and higher education, among other topics, as well as a history of public options in American public policy, this book makes the case for new public options to improve access to life's necessities while cutting costs, improving equity, reducing the power of bad actors in our existing systems, and doing it all while respecting individual liberty and autonomy.
It's a topic I think a lot about, and I still learned a variety of things. (For example, did you know the United States actually had postal banking in the first two-thirds of the 20th century? I didn't!) And overall, it's a clever framework presented in an accessible, conversational, and well-thought-out book. My critiques are that 1) While I appreciate the thought given to counter-arguments, at times it felt defensive and more focused on making a political case than engaging with the positive merits of the ideas proposed; 2) the quality and depth of thought of ideas proposed is at times somewhat uneven (credit reporting is a particularly egregious ideas; and 3) It just kind of petered out at the end, without much of a conclusion.
Those flaws are minor. Overall, this is worth a quick read!
This book is a breezy, accessible, and compelling case for the value of a public option, which "provides an important service at a reasonable cost, and it coexists, quite peaceably, with one or more private options offering the same service," for a variety of modern needs. Covering retirement, healthcare, childcare, and higher education, among other topics, as well as a history of public options in American public policy, this book makes the case for new public options to improve access to life's necessities while cutting costs, improving equity, reducing the power of bad actors in our existing systems, and doing it all while respecting individual liberty and autonomy.
It's a topic I think a lot about, and I still learned a variety of things. (For example, did you know the United States actually had postal banking in the first two-thirds of the 20th century? I didn't!) And overall, it's a clever framework presented in an accessible, conversational, and well-thought-out book. My critiques are that 1) While I appreciate the thought given to counter-arguments, at times it felt defensive and more focused on making a political case than engaging with the positive merits of the ideas proposed; 2) the quality and depth of thought of ideas proposed is at times somewhat uneven (credit reporting is a particularly egregious ideas; and 3) It just kind of petered out at the end, without much of a conclusion.
Those flaws are minor. Overall, this is worth a quick read!
January 1, 2020
A look at how we can improve options by expanding the public option. Why do so many American's have no bank accounts? Why does the free market let people down in several arenas? How can we solve the student debt crisis? The childcare crisis? The lack of broadband options in rural areas? The public option can step in and provide high quality options in all these areas. Don't quite get it? Look at your public library for an example. Public K-12 schools...so many other well functioning choices.
April 4, 2021
'The Public Option' is a good introduction to the concept of quality-focused competition between public and private providers of general facilities. However, its primary fault is that it seems to deify (yes, deify) the Public Option too much over the Private without focusing on the almost elementary handicaps of its preferred choice. More retrospection from the authors would have made this a more accurate and vibrant read.
September 8, 2020
This is unfortunately not very well written and is somewhat chaotic to read. The way the information presented is in all honesty a mess. This book is in serious need of an editor.
I am disappointed as the ideas presented in this book are ideas I am passionate about. But this one misses the mark.
I am disappointed as the ideas presented in this book are ideas I am passionate about. But this one misses the mark.
November 16, 2019
More a long paper, which is very concerned (too concerned) with placing public options in some palatable middle when that time would be better spent just making the case for public option as an improvement in people's lives.
October 9, 2019
A good primer on the concept of public options. Very accessible, with historic and proposed cases.
December 14, 2019
Pretty good arguments as to why public options are better than what we have now. (They don't always go far enough tho, but other than that. Good book.)
February 18, 2020
Beautifully written with examples, counterarguments, and perfectly-backed responses to counterarguments. Eloquent and persuasive, this convinced me without a doubt!
May 15, 2023
Excellent ideas and well thought out... but I just can't envision our country ever trying (getting passed) any of these things in my lifetime. Call me pessimist. :(
October 10, 2023
Highly recommended. Thorough, convincing, and very approachable.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews