The Health Insurance industry does not substantively benefit from the costs of competition. The People of the United States of America, nor humanity itself, benefit from this competition. The administration now seeks to retain that competition largely to serve an ideological Capitalist belief, not for a pragmatic reality. We should embrace the reality of what the industry actually does and, for the betterment of humanity, toss that competition away as useless.
While I am an idealist, I am also a pragmatist. I believe very strongly that we can't solve problems without a firm grasp of what benefits and costs we assess based on how we choose to implement programs. The United States is a profoundly ideological Capitalist country. As such, we teach our children of the primacy of competition. We shove Ayn Rand in their faces and preach competition as a panacea to all of our ills.
A pragmatist looking to solve problems must reject such ideological arguments. The simple fact is that competition doesn't solve all problems. Competition is useful for producing better products and cheaper services, but only in situations where the market is healthy enough to support innovation and the services being produced can be themselves innovated to the benefit of the people without the cost of that competition being itself too much a burden.
The Health Insurance industry does not substantively benefit from the costs of competition. The People of the United States of America, nor humanity itself, benefit from this competition. The administration now seeks to retain that competition largely to serve an ideological Capitalist belief, not for a pragmatic reality. We should embrace the reality of what the industry actually does and, for the betterment of humanity, toss that competition away as useless.
What are the costs of competition?
In the Health Insurance industry the cost of competition comes in the form of marketing expenses, market research, plan restructuring to create false distinctions between plans which wind up costing people more money, and a massive bureaucracy designed to allow the medical industry to interface with an increasingly complex insurance industry. These are very real costs that are reflected in your Health Insurance costs and give you no benefit whatsoever. Perhaps more damaging, that bureaucracy which allows the insurance companies to co-exist with the medical industry creates a cost on the medical industry as well, forcing prices up for everyone who needs medical attention regardless of how they're paying for it. I'm quite certain that there are others costs which I am not even considering right now.
What service do people derive from the Health Insurance industry?
The Health Insurance industry doesn't sell a physical product. It doesn't provide health care itself. It simply pays for it. Insurance is a collectivist system designed so that people can pay into a big pot in the hope that when we get sick and can't afford care, that the insurance will come into play and pay our way in our time of need.
Said another way... from each according to their ability, and to each according to their need.
Sound familiar?
Insurance is Socialism with a profit motive.
Any other aspect of what the insurance company does is simply to enhance the profitability of the essential socialist purpose that they serve.
Why can't competition increase the quality of this service?
It's pretty simple, actually. Insurance companies are financiers. They simply pay for the care. They take money in, and put it out. They don't print money and so the very nature of their service cannot be enhanced.
So all we're left with is the cost of competition and that feel-good kind of glow that people get when they are being ideological.
But doesn't having more insurance companies expand the coverage of possible medical services being provided to people. Can't they compete on that?
It's difficult to say for certain what actually happens in the industry. The truth is that answering this question would have to be taken on a case-by-case basis.
What can be said is that you get what you pay for. As a collectivist pot, insurance companies have more price control when they have more resources and influence. In a perfect market this might produce better service from larger companies, forcing the smaller companies to offer better services. The problem in this case is that those smaller companies are weaker and the truth is that the medical industry sets prices to some significant extent and still has to pay for its' own costs. So the ability for smaller insurance companies to compete by providing a better service is limited and the larger insurance companies have less incentive to provide a better service, allowing them to funnel their increased efficiency into profit... which is the ultimate goal of these companies.
In conclusion...
We must stop sacrificing people on the altar of Capitalism and become pragmatists. Competition should not be nurtured because our ideology says that it's right. We must consider the tangible benefit or lack thereof. To the consumer... to We The People who are this nation... this poisoned industry is slowly killing us. That is why we are at this impasse.
We must hold our elected officials accountable. The insurance industry knows that a for-profit Socialist institution can never stand up to a strong, moral Socialist institution established with the power of The People behind it... and so they rail against the public option. They know they can't compete with it. They know that they can't win against it. They know it will expose them for the thieves that they are.
So a public option is where we have to start. It's not enough to regulate the insurance industry. If we come out of this fight with a moderately regulated industry and a mandate that requires people to buy from the for-profit Socialists... then we have not solved the problem, we've only made it worse.
We absolutely cannot compromise the public option. Also, we can't allow them to weaken it. Moving health care financing into the public realm is the only moral option... and it turns out that it's the only long-term fiscally responsible option as well. If we do not get this, then the administration will have failed at serving The People.