The Wall Street Journal, July 9, 2009 by Editorial Board
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124709618142215031.html#printMode

Jacob Hacker, now a professor of political science at Berkeley, came up with the intellectual architecture for the public option when he was a graduate student in the 1990s. “Someone once said to me, ‘This is a Trojan horse for single payer,’ and I said, ‘Well, it’s not a Trojan horse, right? It’s just right there,’” Mr. Hacker explained in a speech last year. “I’m telling you, we’re going to get there, over time, slowly.”

Time, June 22, 2009 by Kate Pickert
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1906105,00.html

According to Jacob Hacker … rural health cooperatives established after the Great Depression were disbanded, in part, because they were badly managed and were opposed by the physician community…. “The history of cooperatives is that it’s very hard to set these things up, and while we’re trying to set them up, there’s not going to be accountability and pressure [on private insurers],” says Hacker. “They would be weakest when they’re most needed—at the outset.”

The Sacramento Bee, June 16, 2009 by Bobby Caina Calvan
http://www.sacbee.com/business/story/1952806.html

Jacob Hacker, a Berkeley law professor, envisions “modest” payroll taxes, perhaps about 5 percent to 6 percent, to pay for an insurance fund if a company does not directly provide health insurance.

The Sacramento Bee, June 2, 2009 by Mary Agnes Carey of Kaiser Health News
http://www.sacbee.com/inauguration/v-print/story/1912999.html

Speaking for many Democrats, Jacob Hacker, a political science professor at the University of California-Berkeley, said a public plan would provide “a source of coverage that is much more stable and predictable than private plans.”

Los Angeles Times, May 10, 2009 by Noam N. Levey
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-na-healthcare10-2009may10,0,4082964,full.story

“This is a benchmark that will set a high standard that private plans have to meet,” said Jacob Hacker, a political scientist at UC Berkeley who advocates a public option.

Politico.com, April 14, 2009 by Carrie Budoff Brown
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=A1326EE8-18FE-70B2-A854B64621F83AFE

The first and most obvious reason to have the public plan is to have a check on private insurers, a benchmark with which they have to compete…. The second most important area is cost control. Private insurers have been very passive in the face of rising prices. The third area I would emphasize is security. People in all parts of the country need to have the security of knowing they will have access to a backup plan that is available to them in the same terms in all parts of the country.

NPR, All Things Considered, April 7, 2009 by Julie Rovner
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102845967

“Medicare was a socialist plot, according to conservatives, when it was proposed in the 1960s, and now it’s as American as apple pie,” he said. “And I hope that the public plan within health care reform, the choice of a public health plan for non-elderly Americans will come to seem as American as apple pie.”

The New York Times, March 24, 2009 by Reed Abelson
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/25/health/policy/25medicare.html?pagewanted=print

“The Medicare program is a real success story,” said Jacob S. Hacker…. While private health insurance premiums increased an average of 7.3 percent annually from 1997 to 2006, Mr. Hacker said, Medicare spending per enrollee rose only 4.6 percent a year for the same benefits. Private insurers will be able to compete with a federal plan, he said, by offering a wider range of benefits and being more flexible in how they work with doctors and hospitals. “A lot of people are going to want to be in a private plan,” he said.

The Washington Post, February 17, 2009 by Alec MacGillis
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/16/AR2009021601149_pf.html

“The economic stimulus is like CPR for a patient with heart disease, and it will resuscitate the patient if we’re lucky,” said Jacob Hacker, a political scientist at the University of California at Berkeley. “But it won’t provide the cure. What we need is a new New Deal.”

The Christian Science Monitor, February 3, 2009 by Jacob S. Hacker
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0203/p09s01-coop.html

“The task is more pressing because the problems in job-based health benefits will only grow worse as the recession deepens: Businesses will continue to drop coverage and shift costs onto workers, and more and more Americans will lose their homes and their life savings because they lack insurance or their insurance doesn’t shield them against runaway health costs.”

San Francisco Chronicle, January 25, 2009 by Chris Jay Hoofnagle, Christopher Kutz, Jacob S. Hacker, Larry Karp, Jinhua Zhao
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/25/INT315F820.DTL&type=printable

-Chris Hoofnagle Recommends Public Reporting of Identity Thefts
Despite its incidence and severity, consumers have few tools to avoid identity theft. A light touch regulatory approach could spark a revolution in the prevention of fraud if banks and other credit-granting institutions were required to publicly report the number of identity theft incidents, the forms of identity theft and the amount of loss suffered or avoided.

-Chris Kutz Wants Executives to be Liable for Company Losses
So let’s require firms that want to pay in stock options to include a liability component as well, so that executives share both in the upside and downside risks. Liability would force managers to account for the risks they take with other people’s money.

-Jacob Hacker Prescribes Health Care Reforms
In acting now on health care, we’ll be keeping Americans healthy, reducing the financial risks of health care, and encouraging good health-industry jobs. We’ll also be tackling the leading long-term threat to the federal budget: runaway health costs.

International Herald Tribune, January 8, 2009 by Robert Pear and David Stout
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/08/america/09daschle.php

“Public insurance has a better track record than private insurance when it comes to reining in costs while preserving access to care,” Hacker said. “The public plan would set a standard against which private plans must compete.”

WSJ.com MarketWatch, Dec. 18, 2008 by Kristen Gerencher
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/time-finally-right-national-health/story.aspx?guid={B8C88413-236D-48F7-A3A3-F6E421EC8284}

“Contrary to popular perception, Medicare has done a better job controlling costs than private insurance, and that advantage has rapidly grown in the last 20 years or so.”

WSJ.com MarketWatch, Dec. 17, 2008
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/New-Report-Public-Insurance-Option/story.aspx?guid={C8A16DA0-10F8-413D-AE11-15E6B845CAF3}

“Premiums with a public plan cost about three-quarters the amount private insurers charge for the same set of benefits,” said Hacker. “It’s an essential element to any national health care reform proposal.”

The New York Times, Dec. 13, 2008 by Kevin Sack
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/weekinreview/14sack.html?pagewanted=print

“Most Americans are troubled by the lack of universal insurance, but what really frightens them is the prospect that their own insurance won’t protect their health or family finances,” said Jacob S. Hacker … an authority on health care. “That’s a fear that more and more Americans are facing as health costs skyrocket and job security plummets.”

Los Angeles Times, Dec. 1, 2008 by Noam N. Levey
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-na-healthcare1-2008dec01,0,2564031.story

“Possibly more important than policy agreements,” Hacker said, “is the fact that the political forces now are in alignment.”

The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 29, 2008 by Eleanor Laise
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122791328588265155.html#printMode

The theory that financial innovation would suddenly give ordinary consumers the ability to manage all of the risks once borne by big institutions “turned out not only to be false, but catastrophically false,” says Jacob Hacker … author of the book “The Great Risk Shift.”

NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Nov. 20, 2008 by Jeffrey Brown
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july-dec08/retirement_11-20.html

“I think that would involve making sure that those plans were available more broadly … that these plans also provide some of the risk protections that were once provided by traditional defined-benefit plans, such as providing people with a promise of a relatively guaranteed benefit, providing them with a benefit that would allow them to avoid the risk of outliving their assets in retirement, and also protecting them against gross kinds of errors, like over-investing in the stock of your company or in a very badly diversified portfolio.”

Los Angeles Times, Nov. 16, 2008 by Jim Puzzanghera

San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 9, 2008 by Victoria Colliver
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/09/BUIO13VJVF.DTL&type=printable

“Americans have a very strong moral commitment to universal coverage,” said Hacker, adding surveys consistently show Americans want everyone to have health coverage but are concerned about costs. “Once in place, as was the case with Medicare and Social Security, universal insurance will be as American as apple pie.”