Having spent approximately 2/3 of my working career in the public sector, I'm always amused when the people who constantly seek to convince us how efficient the private sector is when compared to government demonstrate that they really don't believe their own propaganda. The private health insurers, and their apologists in the Republican Party, are doing just that, whining that a publicly-administered health insurance option would drive them out of business. The only way a publicly-administered option could do that, of course, would be by delivering a better product and/or a better price for a comparable product.
There is an AP story out today in which the private health insurers and their Republican apologists are threatening to torpedo any health care bill that includes a public option because they're afraid that the public option would be so popular that it would drive them out of business. Here is the money quote from the article:
The proposal, which Obama advocated in his presidential campaign, would for the first time offer government-sponsored coverage to middle class families, as an alternative to private health plans. By some estimates, it could reduce premiums by 20 percent or more — making it much more affordable to cover an estimated 48 million people who don't have health coverage.
But insurers fear competition from a government plan could drive them out of business.
And Republicans worry it would lead to a government takeover of health care.
A question for the private insurers:
- If a government-run insurance program could produce a better product at a better price, to the extent that it would be so popular that it would drive you out of business, exactly what value are you producing that justifies your profits, and that justifies your place in the system?
And a couple questions for their Republican supporters:
- If government bureaucrats are as lazy and unproductive as you're constantly tell us, why are private health insurers terrified of competing with a program that would be run by those bureaucrats?
- Are you really so blinded either by your ideological views or by your need for campaign contributions that you'd deprive the American people of a much needed program to make health care more widely available, simply to protect a private health insurance industry that seems to ADMIT that it produces no value sufficient to justify its overhead and profits?
Sorry that this will be a post-and-run diary for now, but I'll be back off and on to see and respond to any comments.