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.”