In yesterday's presser, President Obama rebuffed a question about the tilted health care playing field. While it made for good TV, his claim that a public option will bring honest competition to the health care marketplace is not true.
The president is right that private insurance companies' claims that they're offering a good deal and that the open market is the best adjudicator of value if not quality are logically flawed. And he's equally right that it rings hollow for private companies to frequently criticize government-run systems as inherently inefficient and wasteful on the one hand, and then say that a public option will drive them out of business on the other hand.
But the underlying point about unfair competition is true. Here's why: private insurance is driven by profit, whereas a government-funded health care system is driven by delivery. There's no way that a private insurance system will be able to compete with one that doesn't add a layer of profit and multiple layers of bureaucracy dedicated to denying coverage, one that doesn't spend billions of dollars in marketing to tell the unsuspecting public just how much they care while simultaneously denying coverage left and right, and billions more on lobbying to prevent the demise of this boondoggle.
The questions that the president didn't ask are the following:
- Why would we want a health-insurance system that didn't maximize health delivery in the most efficient and cost-effective manner?
- Why would we even consider having one that performs as private insurance does?
I know why he didn't pose these questions. But someone in the policy arena should be asking them and soon.
The insurance companies are right: a public option will drive them out of business? So?
Should health care financing legislation serve the needs of insurance companies or the needs of the American public?