First, the public option being proposed would not be funded by taxpayer dollars. Only subsidizing health care for the poor, which is being proposed either with or without a public option. So your argument is silly.

Second, nobody is proposing that anyone goes to jail for not paying up for health care. That argument is even sillier.

I also want to point out that publicly funded health care, as practiced in just about every country other than the US, does compete very favorably with private health insurance companies, providing better care for less cost. This is simply a fact. Statements like the ones from BillB that claim that Canadians would prefer our system are simply lies. There is absolutely no data to back up that claim.

I’ll make people like you a deal — you actually site real data and stop simply repeating lies and calling people names, and we’ll stop thinking that you’re a Republican troll (incidentally, I don’t think anyone actually called you a troll; are you just being sensitive?).

In almost every case, the government cannot compete with private industry without cheating or rigging the system in their favor.

USPS is an embarrassing example of mismanagement and inefficiency. No private company would survive using their practices. None! Notwithstanding the legal mandate for delivery, USPS would be out of business in months if it had to compete in a private market. M-o-n-t-h-s. It’s core business (which is junk mail, btw) is in steep decline. High revenue 1st class letter traffic is falling off a cliff due to email and other factors. They only deliver a fraction of packages (UPS & Fedex alone account for more than 80%) so they could not sustain themselves in that business without the increasingly bulbous teat of government funding in the form of monopoly delivery. Don’t kid yourself; the post office is competition for nothing but time wasting.

The university analogy is specious at best. Public universities are chartered by states. They are effectively 50 independent entities competing with each other (and the private universities.) And there is limited space at each university, creating a supply/demand balance that is impossible with public option mandated to carry all comers. So universities are hardly analogous to the monopoly that centrally run government health care would be.

But despite this competition, the cost of public universities is rising at almost twice the rate of private universities. The effect is that public schools are becoming moderately less competitive relative to private schools. A similar unequal increase in the so called “public’ option would NOT be borne by the users of the public option, but by the taxpayers in general. There is, therefore, no accountability, no incentive to restrain price increases. There is no “leaving the public option” because there is zero possibility that the government would allow costs to rise enough that users would switch to private care. They would just subsidize from the taxpayers, unfairly shifting costs rather than competing.

Further, there is no requirement for higher education. While every individual requires some level of healthcare, anyone can choose not attend college. Try not paying up under the Obamacare plan, and you WILL go to jail. That’s “Change” you better believe in.

So, call us Republican trolls if you will. But ask yourself who is ignoring reality. Ask yourself who is naive. Ask yourself who is mindlessly droning someone else’s talking points. And take a long hard look in the mirror.

Funny… Repubs criticize the goverment for under-funding the cash for clunkers program, and for not bailing out Lehman Brothers… but wait… if we don’t want government intervention then why should it be the government’s responsibility to mobilize an economy befallen by greed???

1) my post wasn’t so much as directed at cost control. It was showing how positve feedback mechanisms will make it nearly impossible for private insurance companies to survive.
Yes, costs have skyrocketed. It’s not sustainable – therefore it won’t happen, something will start to limit the cost growth. This is another issue for debate

2) Re: rationing: We have friends from Canada who all advise us “Don’t do it”, we Americans have it good by comparison. (>80% like it as it is).

3) As far as it never happening in other industrialized nations: What makes you say it hasn’t? I would consider long waiting times a form a rationing – e.g. statisticly certain % will die before getting necessary cancer treatments or not getting them in time.

The scary part about Obamacare is the it will kill private insurance. All that needs to be done to prevent this is a provision to ban cost shifting – but then MediCare/MediCaid need to stop doing it was well.

Second you say that rationing is coming to America. I don’t know how anyone could have interacted with the health care system in America in the last 10 years and not know that we already have rationing. I have had direct experience with the health care systems in three countries that have single-payer systems, plus America, and in every instance I had more trouble getting access to some treatment here in the USA than I did in England, Canada, or New Zealand.

Which brings up the question — if what you say is true, why has it not happened in any other industrialized nation, all of which have universal health care and most of which have single payer?

Although I agree with you that cost-shifting should be illegal.

[sigh. no matter how many people tell me to not feed trolls, I never seem to learn.]

Mediacare and Medicaid caused this mess and this new universal care is only more of the same poison.

40+ years ago Mediacard/Medicaid decided to control costs by only paying providers X cents on the doller. So if a provider charged $100 then Medicare/Medicaid only them a check for $50. Medicare/Medicaid could do this because they were so big, had so many members. What’s a provider to do say no to the old lady? So the provider takes the $50 but then has to make up the other $50 somehow. So guess what? They raise their service fee to $125 to compensate. So now everyone else is paying more. So then private insurance companies got wind of this scam and got into the game. They negotiated rates with provders that were also less than stated service fees. So now providers had to raise thier rates even more to compensate. So result is that the person trying to pay cash is really getting hit. In effect the largest group of consumers gets to shift their costs onto the smaller groups. So now the larger insurance companies can charge lower premiums – because they have ‘negotited’ lower service fees. Because the larger insurance comapnies preminums are lower everyone now gravitates to the largest companies giving those companies even more leverage over the providers and smaller insurance companies. This is a classic positive feedback situitiaon. Now what happens when the largest insurance company – by far – will be the universional plan? Because of the cost shifting no other insurance companies can survive- everyone will be ‘forced’ to go to the unversial plan because of its signifcantily lower fees – becuase it passed the cost onto everyone else.
So once there is only universal care left then how will costs be controlled? Only one way left: Rationing. Don’t kid yourself it’s coming to America.

The utter stupidity of compromising a situation that works for most (~80%) to make a miniority satisifed is just self imolation.

The fix is simple: Ban cost shifting-Treat it as racketeering. Private sector AND Goverment are prohibited from such praticies.

Even if Obama was proposing single payer, it would NOT drive private insurance out of business. As for how much it would change their business, private insurance already doesn’t serve a large number of Americans (18 percent of the population under the age of 65). My mother, who is on Medicare (which is single-payer), also has a private health insurance policy.

But Obama is only proposing a public option. People would be free to keep their own private insurance. Your analogy with the USPS is wrong, because by law, only the USPS can deliver first class mail. There will be no such restriction against private health insurance.

So how can you say that a public *option* will drive private insurers out of even the routine insurance business?

This is precisely the point. The public option will drive private insurers out of the routine insurance business and relegate them to serving high-end consumers who can afford the extra price tag for better service. This is no different from what happens in single payer systems like Canada’s–where everyone relies on the government for care except the rich.

I have no idea why you think this defeats the argument against Obama’s plan.