Obama has often made the assertion that a federal-government-run “public option” is a necessary, fundamental part of healthcare reform because “competition is needed to keep the private insurance companies honest.”
If a “public option” is necessary to provide competition in what has until now been a private sector of the economy, why isn’t a private option necessary to provide competition in areas where the government has a monopoly?
Why shouldn’t we have a “private option” in primary & secondary education? Won’t real education reform require vouchers, and competition?
Why shouldn’t we have a “private option” in the government’s massive, compulsory retirement scheme known as social security? Why shouldn’t working men and women have choices about where their social security account dollars are invested?
[crickets chirping]
That’s what I thought. Neither President Obama nor the liberal pack baying for healthcare reform care a fig about competition. The “public option” is a stalking trojan horse that will enable the government to transition to a single-payer system.
But a naked proposal for a single-payer system would never get the votes for passage, so the “public option” must be employed and cloaked in a fig leaf of pretend admiration for “competition.”
The health care system seems to be sick by its deficiency in vitamin C. There is no competition because the free market forces have been removed. Few people have enough skin in the game to learn the options and shop for bargains. Insurance will buy it for a co-pay inconsequential to most. So the answer is yes to procedures and remedies without consideration of alternatives, one of which in the free market is to do without. The solution seems to require people to learn costs, options, and effectiveness, to shop around. That means more out of pocket direct to provider and less out of pocket to insurance. It needs to hurt enough to force consumers to be shoppers.
The other health care sickness appears to be from the Ponzi Virus. Medicaid and Medicare are not funded to the levels required of insurance companies. Union health care, Postal Workers, congressmen, and other groups have the vitamin C deficiency in their plans. Their costs are out of control. If a judge can change a contract taking away bondholders’ property rights to their collateral, then he can change a contact to take away free health care from privileged groups. This is glaringly pertinent to UAW which spent all the stockholder and bondholder money and is now spending taxpayer money while losing money on every vehicle they produce.