… and I’ll support a public option for private healthcare when the government supports a private option (vouchers) for public education.

In a free market, there is always the option for the customer to say ‘no’ to every competitor. You can make your own beer nor not drink, build a car from scrap metal or ride the bus, and so on. Homeschooling is a null competitor.

Everyone in the market tries to beat the null competitor. As long as there is a good tradeoff to not using the product at all, i.e, that you get to pocket the money by forgoing the product or they can do it better themselves, some people will choose to do so.

The problem with the public option is that it removes the null competitor. It will make it impossible to afford medical care of any kind without insurance, since prices will skyrocket. What the government subsidizes, it gets more of.

To top it off, they’re even going to mandate that everyone get insurance. That’s the worst possible thing to do. It will lead inevitably to market-wide price controls and more regulation and tinkering, since the public option will be so unpalatable. But they will strangle private insurers with compliance regs until private and public look depressingly similar.

It’s the only way to sell the program.

Obama said “I don’t think government bureaucrats should be meddling. But I also don’t think insurance company bureaucrats should be meddling,”

There are 2 falsehoods in that statement, but the press just let it go. The first is an outright lie: “I don’t think government bureaucrats should be meddling.” is obviously false when he’s pushing a public program that sets up government bureaucrats to do just that. It’s a bald faced lie. In his program, government bureaucrats will have even more power over the care you get than insurance companies get now.

The second is more subtle. “But I also don’t think insurance company bureaucrats should be meddling,” Insurance companies do sometime make suggestions for alternate cheaper treatments. For example an insurance company may request that a standard X-Ray be done before more expensive MRIs are approved in the hopes that the X-ray will show whatever problem is there without the need for the more costly test. The doctor and patient then have several options.
1. Do the X-ray first.
2. Give an answer to the insurance company explaining why the cheaper test is not appropriate.
3. Do the MRI anyway and force the insurance company to pay through arbitration.
4. Have the patient pay for it themselves. In all 4 options the test still gets done.

The insurance meddling is irritating, but usually has some basis in reality and can be worked around.

In the government option case, the choices with the same situation are:
1. Do the X-ray first and HOPE that they CHANGE their mind and let you get the MRI later (assuming there is an MRI machine available for the test).
2. Don’t get the test at all.
There are no options to pay for the tests yourself. There is no recourse to sue to bureaucrat for causing you harm (you can’t sue a government official for performing his/her normal duties as prescribed).

The false choice he set up is that the only options are “government choosing your care” or “the insurance company choosing your care”/ The insurance company doesn’t choose your care, it only chooses which parts of your care it will pay for. You and your doctor still choose the care you get. When the government gets involved, it WILL choose your care.

and absolutely infuriating that the media doesn’t do a better job at calling out the people who spout this ignorance.
Sen. Spector, in an interview with Chris Wallace this Sunday was asked if he would forgo his fantastic insurance for the “public option” and he said he wold “consider it”, but that people needed to remember that it was just an “option”.
NO IT’S NOT! It may be in the first few years, but not for long. And then, “Oops! We didn’t know this would happen. *wink, wink*” “Must’ve been because those evil insurance companies were cheating people all those years and now they have some REAL competition and couldn’t hack it.”

And I want to hear anyone ask Obama what he meant when he spoke to the AFL-CIO and said he was a proponent of a “single payer system”, but then went on to tell them that we couldn’t eliminate private insurance all at once, but we’d get there eventually after “we” (whoever “we” is) take back the White House, Congress, and Senate. I think almost everyone has seen this video and it’s like a pink elephant in the room. Nobody is talking about it.

Then Specter was confronted with his statement in May when he said he opposed the reconciliation process to pass bills. Wallace asked him if he would support it to pass health care “reform” and he said, YES (in so many words). What a blatant hypocrite and liar. Does anyone in Washington have any scruples??? Are they blatantly going to defy the democratic process and ignore the American people and cram this down our throats even if we don’t want it?? Isn’t that taxation (after all, they do have to pay for it somehow) without representation?

Obama’s government managed competition is nothing short of a single payer American nationalized health care government plan and socialized delivery system which does not and will not bring competition. However, it will guarantee and ensure his complete communization of health care plans, treatments and benefits across the States whether you like it or not. (Sec. 141) and (Subtitle E)

I think all of us should be challenging our representatives to draft emergency legislation offering health insurance through Medicare (?) to all Americans who really want it – this will solve the immediate “Katrina” issue. Then let them attempt an overhaul.

When suggested to my Rep and Senators, it fell on deaf ears. Of course – this is about power not benevolence.

With the continued hints that Dems will go nuclear on this – gotta’ keep those far left donors happy – I think we’re seeing a huge shift away from this proposal. Even the most loyal party hack might wonder why they feel the need to force this, moral obligation aside.

Thanks for the great morning briefings, Erick.

While the Leftists claim that they desire “competition,” what they really seek is single-payer where there is NO free-market insurance option. The evidence showing Obama’s love for single-payer is everywhere, and has been covered here on Redstate and throughout the internets in recent weeks.

I don’t think the Left is stupid enough to think that a government-run healthcare option will improve competition, as the points you make are patently obvious. The Obama shills are not stupid – they are slimy snakes who are after socialism however they can get it. Lying about “competition” is a standard part of their kit bag. They are counting on misleading us dumb rubes in flyover country and the seniors who are afraid of losing Medicare.

Debunking this claim of “competition” should be the next big push for those of us who oppose socialized medicine. We need another “death-panels” style tag to pin on the lies about competition.

It would be interesting to see how a court would rule, if this nightmare of a plan gets passed. If Mr. Erickson’s analysis is correct, and I believe it is, this would be a clear cut anti-trust case. It has the makings of a great Supreme Court case. Big Government Program (oversight by an impartial body, of course) vs. Free Market Competition.

so to see it used as a comparison to the public option in health care pains me a little. But to look at the analogy more closely the Post Office does have a monopoly on first class mail and the use of official mail boxes but its other services, specifically package delivery, has been left open to competition and has been spawned Fedex and UPS to fill the service gap.

Couldn’t a public option cover some basics but that for other services you’d much prefer an insurer or simply to pay your doctor directly. Fedex doesn’t have to deliver all the useless stuff like junk mail so they can focus on the important documents that need to be on time and tracked. Could a public option cover basics so that private companies could then focus on the real important and serious medical issues.

I’m not really in support of a public option, I’m wondering if there might be a potential up side for private industry.