The Post partnered with Andres Martinez of the New America Foundation to host an online dialogue with Washington think tankers on health care reform.

Andres Martinez (New America): We're taking stock this week of President Obama's first 100 days in office, so I'd like you to share your thoughts on what the administration has accomplished in this period on health care reform. Any surprises?

Len Nichols (New America): I have been impressed with the president's willingness to say that the cost of inaction is too high to delay health reform, even in the face of an economic crisis. The president has also remained clear that he would like to do health reform on a bipartisan basis. ...

On the governance question, I think the people who run the public health insurance plan need to be different than the people who run the exchange, the overall marketplace. The people who run the plan should be accountable to someone elected or appointed in government, while the people running the exchange should be ultimately accountable to the people who participate in the marketplace.

Stuart Butler (Heritage): I would say to my friend Len that, while what he says is in principle correct, it is like the unicorn: a wondrous animal that cannot exist in the real world. The rules will always be loaded in favor of the public plan. You simply won't have a wall of separation.

Andres Martinez (New America): Len, I know you have written about the various ways in which a public plan could be prevented from having an unfair advantage in marketplace. But if we make the public plan indistinguishable from private plans in how it behaves, why have one? There does feel to be a Trojan Horse quality to the idea that Uncle Sam will be just another competitor in the mix, until...

Len Nichols (New America): First, many Americans fundamentally distrust private insurance, just like other Americans distrust government. So people should be able to choose between public and private plans. Second, a public plan will provide a benchmark against which premiums, benefits, and provider networks of private insurers can be judged. That will be particularly valuable in year one, when insurers will be asked to submit bids for the first time under new rules. Uncertainty will be great, and competition will be enhanced if there is a benchmark premium bid that is set to break even, not to make a large profit.

Andres Martinez (New America): Health care reform is one of these classic D.C. battles, where political junkies who may not even be well versed on the subject at hand (um, that would be me) get handed a scorecard and are told to suddenly keep an eye on previously insider-baseball debates like the ones on public plans and individual mandates, to discern who's up and who's down -- and soon enough everyone inside the Beltway can't remember what the object of the game was in the first place. What do I tell my mom? That Obama is trying to do something to cover the nearly 50 million Americans who don't have health care coverage, or that he is trying to contain costs? Linda Blumberg (Urban): I would tell your mom that he is trying to do both. But the cost-containment battle is going to be incredibly tough because cost containment means someone's income is going down.

Len Nichols (New America): The thing is you can't solve one problem in our health system in isolation. High costs make access impossible, spotty access makes delivery of high-quality care difficult, and poor quality leads to higher costs. You can't solve one problem without solving the other two. Thomas Miller (AEI): Tell your mom (gently, so you don't scare her) to save more of her money and stock up on medical supplies. Unless she falls into a more politically favored demographic, the whole health care system will get more expensive for her, and her choices will be increasingly limited over time...