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Critics Say Health Plan Lacks Competition

STEVE INSKEEP, host:

One of the people struggling to wade through the rhetoric is Kathleen Sebelius. As Secretary of Health and Human Services she is a leading voice for the administration's health plans. In an interview heard elsewhere on this program, she says the so-called public option is the hardest thing to explain.

Secretary KATHLEEN SEBELIUS (Department of Health and Human Services): Some of the opposition has described it as a potential for a draconian scenario that was never part of the discussion in the first place. So disabusing people of what is not going to happen is often difficult because there is no tangible way to do that.

INSKEEP: Can you say flat out it's just never going to be single-payer health insurance and we're going to try to write it if we can so that it won't ever be?

Secretary SEBELIUS: Oh, I think - I think that's very much the case.

INSKEEP: In the NPR interview, Kathleen Sebelius says this is not a trick, a promise that Republicans have yet to accept.

You're listening to MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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