The introduction of a government-run competitor into the semi-private insurance market is a deliberate and irreversible first step toward a so-called “single-payer” health care system. You don’t have to take my word for it; just listen to Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), who have both voiced their support for a “public option,” which, as the “best way to reach single-payer” (Frank, 7/27/09), will “put private industry out of business” (Schakowsky, 4/18/09).

The term “single-payer” is, of course, just a fancy way of referring to a health care system in which each and every health care transaction goes through a middle man — and in which that middle man is the government. Yes, that’s the same government that runs the DMV, the Post Office (which President Obama himself said “is always having problems,” and which only remains afloat because of its monopoly on the mail-delivery business), the $33 trillion-in-debt Medicaid program, and myriad other offices and programs that you have come to despise dealing with over the years.

The creation of a “public option” makes America’s transition to a single-payer (government-run) health care system inevitable, due to three chief advantages this new marketplace “competitor” has over its private (but heavily regulated) opponents. These are: (1) the folks who run it – the federal government – make all of the rules in the marketplace; (2) the federal government has an unlimited supply of funds, being able to print and borrow as much money as it takes to fund its programs, and (3) the federal government is not constrained by the one Great Equalizer among private sector operations: the need to make a profit to survive.

A “public” entity can be “in the red” financially every year of its existence, and still be able to continue operating — something a private sector business simply cannot do, due to its absolute need to be able to make payroll, afford overhead, and pay its taxes.

Were Congressional Democrats (apart from Frank and Schakowsky) honest in their desire to simply make the “public option” a marketplace option, rather than trying to make it the market, members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee would not have voted along party lines to kill an amendment preventing the “public option” from taking advantage of preferential tax treatment, favorable regulation, and the ability to borrow from other federal agencies’ budgets.