More centrist Democrats share the goal of universal coverage, but have gravitated toward a regulate-mandate-subsidize model because it has a lower explicit fiscal cost and keeps much of the insurance market in private hands.
Driving cost reductions must be the explicit purpose and primary design of deployment policies and achieving consistent reductions in the unsubsidized cost of clean energy technologies must be the metric that rationalizes deployment investments.
The task force is also the only federal health agency to have the explicit legal authority to consider cost as one criterion in recommending whether patients should use a medical test or treatment.
That may secure the needed investment, but it would mark the end of Britain's love affair with liberalised energy markets and would make the cost of clean energy uncomfortably explicit.