One can only marvel at the fact that Democrats keep saying this:
“I have a problem with this government option plan,” [Rep. Rick] Boucher [D-VA] said. “I’m troubled that the government option plan could become very popular and if it became sufficiently popular it could begin to crowd out the other” private insurance companies.
I’m interested to know what the moral case is for maintaining the profitibility and viability of private health insurance companies. It seems that Congress wants to create some kind of artificial balance where there isn’t any clear advantage to buying the public option over the private ones. The public option is supposed to put some downward pressure on the cost of buying private insurance, but without actually being, you know, a better deal. Or, if it is a better deal, it isn’t so obviously better that everyone will opt for it.
Essentially they are trying to create an alternative to buying insurance on the private market that will force the private insurers to offer plans at a lower price, but not so low as to wipe out their profitibility. The goal, I suppose, is to reach a point of equilibrium where there is no difference between the public and private options, but the private insurers are still making profits.
While doctors, nurses, specialists, and hospitals need to make a profit and earn good incomes, it isn’t clear to me why private insurance companies need to be involved in the provision of health care. All they do is increase the cost of obtaining treatment without adding anything of value to the patient. It is transparently in the national interest to provide health care to as many citizens as possible at the lowest possible cost. There is no way that private insurers should be part of solving for that problem.
What we want to prove is that we can cut the private insurers out of the transaction without it lessening the quality of or access to care. Eliminating a needless third-party that leeches record profits out of the medical system will dramatically drive-down the overall societal cost of health care and free up all that money to be used in more efficient ways.
Protecting the private health care insurers makes no sense for anyone but the private health care insurers, their stockholders, and their employees. So, why would anyone even admit to caring about their fate?
