From my perspective, health care is not something anyone should be allowed to make a serious profit on. Peolpe should be paid for their good works - but I think that, given the costs of both insurance and services and the complex calculus between them, it seems unlikely that there could be any doubt that a government funded and subsidized option would be cheaper. The big scary part for the Capitalists is that this could cut into the bottom line of the insurance companies, simple as that. It could - gasp! - even render health insurance obsolete!
The best argument I've heard against it came from John Boner (sorry, Boehner, that's BAY-NER), who said something to the effect of "Who do you want writing your prescriptions? Your doctor? Or a government mandate?" On the surface, this might seem to make sense. But is your doctor really writing your prescriptions now? Or is it the shareholder-mandated rules of some massive, for-profit insurance company? Tell me now, is that any worse than a government office? At least the government is nominally looking out for the interests of the general public; big companies rarely profess with any honesty to look out for anyone but their shareholders and CEOs.
Either way, your doctor is getting pushed to prescribe you something - but somewhere between the pharma companies and the insurance companies is a complicated and insidious algorithm as to what can be prescribed or recommended, and who is going to make the most money out of it. In a gov't-run model, there would doubtlessley be waste and pork... but to the level of huge insurance companies? I doubt it.
So can anyone tell me - is there REALLY any good argument against serious health care reform with a public option, or even a single-payer solution? And don't even try to give me an answer that includes "but then all those poor people who work at insurance companies would be out of work, unemployment, UNEMPLOYMENT!" Screw that. If we'd said "tough luck" to the bankrupt auto makers, and then we provided some buffer-zone cash and six months of job training to all of those out of work employees, we'd still probably be out a lot less money than we are now, we'd have millions of people ready to go to work in potentially beneficial industries, and we'd be rid of some obsolete companies.
Useless or obsolete corporations and industries should not be subsidized simply because there are people who still depend on their revenue stream. If they are out of date or becoming a drain on people outside themselves, too bad - let 'em rot. Shareholders should not be given serious consideration in matters like that, IMHO: when you put your money into the market, you're pulling the big arm on that Wall Street one-armed-bandit, and if you lose your money, don't come crying to the government. When you lose a poker do you crawl to the dealer or the house manager and complain that you thought you made a good bet and you should really not be allowed to lose? Are you simply Too Big To Fail? No such thing. Roll your dice and move your mice, and don't be a sore loser - especially if you do something monumentally stupid.
This is how I feel about the for-profit model of health care and insurance. All those trillions of dollars being funneled into premiums could be so much better spent being put into a fund, or people's pockets, or directly to the hospitals, or SOME model that cuts out the stinking middle man.
Oops - are my biases showing? Too high on my soap box? Well please - somebody present me with some non-farcical, actually compelling reasons why there should be ANY reasonable argument against a public health insurance option, or that we shouldn't go single payer. The only reason I can see not to is becomes a few people want to keep their revenue stream going, and that is no good basis for the health and welfare of an entire nation.
Nabib
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