Reform health insurers can believe in

Earlier this month, the health insurance industry started broadcasting a 'pro-reform' television ad (paid for with your insurance premiums).

In the ad, insurance companies pledge to make health coverage "as affordable as possible" and to make pre-existing conditions "a thing of the past." They even pledged to support "bipartisan reform."

Watch:

Sounds good, right? Finally, the dreaded health insurance industry has decided to take a seat at the table and get serious about reform, right?

Well, not exactly. There's a catch.

You see, the health insurance industry is only promising to do these good things "if everyone's covered," and "if everyone's covered" is just a polite way of saying "if everybody is forced to buy our product."

This isn't a laughing matter, but the funny thing is that they're serious. They really do want to force you to buy their product -- with no competition from anybody else -- and they don't see anything wrong with that.

Insurance companies call this "bipartisan reform," a shorthand way of saying "we don't want any competition from a public plan."

Why are they comfortable with the idea of "bipartisan reform?"

Because no Republican, at least not in the U.S. Senate, would ever support a public option. So to them, "bipartisan" means "no public option."

The same thing goes for Democrats: any Democrat who says a bill must be "bipartisan" doesn't want a public option. (Note the emphasis on must -- some Democrats say they want a "bipartisan" bill, but want and must aren't the same thing.)

In theory, the idea of a mandate is actually a good one. Absent a single-payer national insurance system, it's the only way to achieve universal coverage, and the only way to ensure that everybody takes responsibility for the risks they impose on the health care system.

But to really work, a mandate must give people options, including both private and public plans. Without those options, private companies will have a monopoly on the system, and we all know how that will work out: good for them, and bad for us.

For decades, it's been clear the the private health insurance industry has done an abysmal job meeting the needs of ordinary Americans. Now they are promising to get their act together -- but only if everybody is required to buy their product, with no public option to provide competition.

Only a fool would take such a promise seriously. Fortunately, Americans aren't fools, and when the dust settles, the health insurance industry isn't going to get what it wants.

At least that's what we hope. Any other possibility would be too depressing and disastrous to contemplate.