President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton over the past week have both called for a new government-run insurance option. But the “public option”— which some Democrats have been trying to enact since health law negotiations in 2009 — isn’t a panacea for the problems plaguing Obamacare, Harvard expert Katherine Baicker tells POLITICO’s “Pulse Check” podcast.

“More competition in insurance markets is a great idea,” Baicker said. “It’s not clear to me that the public option is going to be an effective way to introduce that competition.”

Baicker, a respected economist who served on President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, has standing to weigh in: In the JAMA article where Obama laid out his public option earlier this week, no expert was cited more than her.

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