Comments on: undeniable truths from reason online

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 21:34:19 +0000

I don’t know, the U.S. post office provides excellent competition to private industry, and none of the private services have shut down. Instead they compete with the U.S. government and bounce shipping rates off of each other. Why can’t insurance companies do that?

I’m all for getting the best out of our tax dollar, but there’s no evidence whatsoever that suggests Republicans actually care about the government running certain programs. For 8 solid years the GOP did nothing but increase government control over the private sector: education, homeland security, banking, insurance companies, airlines, birth control, so many more I could list; but the point is dismissing the public option because of some new found belief in less government is DOA, especially from Republicans.

I do believe the federal government has a mandate to provide health care. I don’t believe it falls squarely on employers, which does nothing but kill small business. If there is a mandate for the federal government to provide such services it came last November when Obama ran his entire campaign openly and nearly solely on a domestic agenda built around a public option for health care.

I totally agree we should move slowly, anything done quickly in Washington is usually worthless (ex. Patriot Act).

By: Lisa

Lisa — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 03:30:55 +0000

I’m all for competition, but I don’t think it’s likely that the government will provide the kind of competition necessary to improve existing private health care plans / policies. There is no evidence that the government has the ability to run anything well, based on the existing public services currently in operation. The government is more likely to effectively crush its competition rather than encourage and stimulate needed change and reform, as well as medical innovations. You and I both know that there are things the government can do to decrease the costs of health care coverage and to help make needed medical procedures cheaper for the consumer that we haven’t even tried yet.

A more basic question would be what responsibility the federal government has to provide health care to all Americans. We probably disagree on this. I just don’t see how this falls within any kind of federal mandate. This is a serious deal to me because like we have been saying here, it would be a permanent change that we can’t reverse. So we really need to go slower on any change this big.

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:05:28 +0000

Huuumm…wouldn’t a national health care plan cover everyone? I mean, by definition, if we implement a national health care system, all would be covered and it would be, dare I say, socialism, right?

Maybe that’s why it’s not a national health care plan, but a public option for those who want to partake. Someone like me, for instance, would keep my current insurance provider. Those taking the public option would be people whose employers don’t offer insurance, or people who can’t afford it on their own.

Does that mean it will make people like me who already have employer provided health insurance switch to the public option? Maybe. If the public option is cheaper and just as effective/ineffective as current providers (we could argue the efficient-ness of private providers all day long I suppose, I’m not that impressed by them). Isn’t that competition? Doesn’t competition drive prices down? Isn’t that the basis of capitalism?

If private insurance companies want to survive in a world with a public option, they will have to learn to compete, or fold. That’s how it works. I don’t think we should completely dismiss a public option because it will make private options more susceptible to capitalism.

The price tag for the public option, I totally agree with you. It needs to be looked at very hard and scrutinized to the penny. The last thing we need is another bloated government run program that nobody knows how to manage properly or efficiently.