Harris Discusses Last-Ditch Healthcare Solutions for Republicans in The Hill Op-ed
Joseph Harris, an affiliate of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies’ Boston University’s Center for the Study of Asia, Global Development Policy Center, and Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, and Associate Professor of Sociology at Boston University, wrote an op-ed article for The Hill and was published on November 11, 2025.
After a recent loss in the polls and disapproval ratings growing, Harris urges that President Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress must prioritize improving healthcare costs for the American people with a “public option”. Trump has already made deals with Ely Lilly and Novo Nordisk to lower prices for popular weight loss drugs. Harris explains, “Such populist economic moves will not only put money in the pockets of Americans at a time when prices are rising, but they will also enjoy more what they see in the mirror and live longer too.” But, he notes, the GOP will have to push further in order to regain their approval ratings.
Promoting a “public option” to healthcare would allow many Americans the option between public and private providers, lower market costs through competition, and would succeed the promise of the Affordable Care Act. Harris explains the reasons this solution should appeal to Republicans,
First, it takes the air out of Democratic proposals for single-payer health insurance by embracing a much more moderate reform that will lower costs dramatically without radically transforming the health care marketplace… Secondly, it doesn’t force Americans into a public plan. Private insurance plans continue to exist. It simply increases market competition by introducing a new option Americans can choose if they wish.
This would also minimize the premium costs of private insurers, administrative costs typically ranging from 10–20%, while the public options costs only 2–6%, pushing them to become more efficient. Americans pay a lot for their healthcare, and Harris states “having a public option means you put a mechanism in place that bends the cost curve permanently.”
Click here to read the full op-ed.
Joseph Harris is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Boston University. He conducts comparative historical research that lies at the intersection of sociology, political science, and global health. He is the author of Achieving Access: Professional Movements and the Politics of Health Universalism (Cornell University Press, 2017). He is the Vice Chair of the International Studies Association’s Global Health Section and a member of the editorial collective at Studies in Comparative International Development. He is co-founder of the American Sociological Association’s Global Health and Development Interest Group, a past member of the governing Council of the ASA Section on the Sociology of Development, and past Associate Editor at Social Science and Medicine. He holds a doctorate in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Master’s in Public Affairs from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.