Ed Walsh has quickly become one of my favorite conservatives.  Of course, I disagree with him about 94 percent of the time, too, but he’s always thoughtful, and he’s always entertaining.

Ed makes good points about a public health plan option, but I guess I have more faith in the private sector than he does.  When we get past all the “sky-is-falling” rhetoric about how a public plan will bring ruin to private insurance companies, I think we will see some terrific innovation from health insurance companies over the next few years.

One area where private companies will always have an advantage over the government is in coordination of care, which everyone agrees is essential to getting health costs under control.    The much-maligned Medicare Advantage plan is a good example.

Traditional Medicare is a payment system — it receives claims, and pays claims.  Medicare Advantage (which is Medicare delivered through private insurers, funded with public money), on the other hand, is a health delivery system which actively manages the care of our seniors.

The best Medicare Advantage plans out there assign care managers to each patient–to ensure, for instance, that doctors talk with one another, and get on the same page when prescribing medication or treatment.  That’s why the best Medicare Advantage programs have markedly better outcomes.

Of course, Medicare Advantage has a lot of problems overall, which is why it’s being targeted for cuts.  But the point is:  these are the same insurance companies that will be competing against the public plan, and the best of them have proven they can do something the government isn’t capable of doing.  In the end, the good ones will prosper, the bad ones will fall behind, and Americans will be the beneficiaries.  Isn’t that what competition is supposed to be all about?