Cal-Care: California's Public Option

The research team will first review other states’ progress in developing public options and discuss the lessons learned and implications for California. They will then describe and discuss the strengths of California’s health care delivery system to provide higher-quality, lower-cost care under two public option approaches. This will be followed by three analyses: 1) how competitive the premiums of these two public option approaches might be on Covered California marketplace; 2) how much enrollment they might achieve; and 3) the effect of a new public option on premiums in the 19 California Affordable Care Act geographic rating areas. This will be followed by an analysis of implementation issues based, in part, on interviews with key stakeholders.