If I were in love with the American model I'd go and live in America. This is not the case. I admire the social mobility of American society. You can start with nothing and become a spectacular success. You can fail and get a second chance. Merit is rewarded... On the other hand I’m not a great fan of the American social model. Social insurance is insufficient and unequal. I do not accept that someone must receive substandard health care or no health care at all, just because he is poor. - Nicolas Sarkozy, Testimony
I should have saved that quote for when I plan to write about what my vision of American social insurance is. However, it is a good lead in to again write about the deception going on around the public health care option. Exhibit A, the "Young Turks" whoever they are. If you watch the short video, the brainless commentator quips that Republicans are scared the plan will work too well. If this guy doesn't get it, there are probably millions more who don't get it as well.
This was really the heart of my Florida Insurance post. For the public option to be competitive and to put pressure on the private insurers, it must be priced less than private options. It therefore must be priced regardless of risk, or underpriced with respect to risk. This is false competition introduced into a free market. No private firm can compete with these prices. If anything, it will force private insurers to only insure the LEAST risky of all individuals. The YouTube video states that because people would dump private insurance for public then public must be the way to go. This is idiotic. Households seek to maximize utility and if a public option were cheaper than any private insurance, it would be a stupid decision on a household level to not choose the public option (unless the service provided by the private insurer provided more utility which the individual deems worth paying for). So what will happen is that more and more people will start dumping their private plans. Employers will stop paying for private insurance because it will be cheaper for everyone to just put them on the public plan.
Now, I just said "cheaper". You have to realize that you will at first be paying for the public option like you do for your normal insurance. But you are also paying for in taxes (if my current reader is successful enough to pay taxes). Regardless of whether you are on a public or private plan, you cannot get out of paying for the public option with your tax dollars.
"One of the virtues of it, though, is that you can at least make the claim that there is a competitive system between the public and private sectors." -Dr Jacob Hacker
"Someone once said to me this is a Trojan Horse for single-payer, and I said, well its not a Trojan Horse, right? It’s just right there." -Dr. Jacob Hacker
Dr. Hacker does not even try to coat this public option in the veil of politics. The end goal of this public option is to destroy, to put the private health insurance industry out of business. And we can see exactly how it gets there.
So what then? After a sufficient amount of people are attached to public insurance, the next logical step is to go to the UK model. Our own NHS (National Health Service) will be completely taxpayer funded (no premiums paid) and doctors, nurses, hospital staff will all work for the government. Here is the catch, though. Remember how risk in the public option had to be under assessed? For an American NHS to work, it will need more funding. It will need more taxes. The amount of these taxes will no doubt be HIGHER than any amount you were ever paying for private insurance. Again, politicians will seek to tax the wealthy but they will not find enough funding there. They will have to tax the middle class as well. The quality of our health care system will be reduced. Innovation will decline. And procedures and medicines will be denied based on government policy and saving the taxpayers money.
The rich need not worry. I am 100% sure we will see a two tiered system in this country. For the rich, who can afford it, there will still be private insurance and doctors NOT on the government pay roll. Rich patients will be able to get all the care they wish for regardless if the government thinks they are too old to be wasting tax payer dollars on for that operation.
The intent of this post is not to argue that the poor, the elderly, or the currently uninsurable should not receive medical care. As I said, I will try to outline later my views on setting a framework for what government's social responsibility should be (I do agree with Sarkozy). What I am arguing is that the public option is a BAIT AND SWITCH. The consumer is promised one thing (more affordable health care) and then is slapped in the face with a single payer system, less freedom, and much higher taxes.
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