Margaret Carlson: Public Option Critical

[flpoljunkie]

Excerpts from "Obama May Prove Best Friend Insurers Ever Had"
Commentary by Margaret Carlson

July 23 (Bloomberg)

Public Option Critical

There’s a catch: If Congress enacts and Obama signs into law a bill that includes a mandate that everyone have insurance -- the provision common to every major proposal -- but leaves out a public option, we are toast.

The public option means you wouldn’t have to be very old or very poor to get insurance from the government, as you do now. It would give the previously uninsured and those for whom it is a financial burden a place to go. We’d keep the basic system we have but add an option for the middle class to get coverage through the government.

Because the government administers health care for far less than do private companies, a public option would almost certainly mean instant price relief that insurers would fail to match at their peril.

It’s easy to see why the insurers are opposed, and hard to see why anyone else would be. Yet the industry may have the votes to kill the public option without resorting to arson.

Bankrupt Anyway

Such a bill would do exactly what the Congressional Budget Office says it will, bankrupt the country. But the current system is doing that anyway. The reason you can pick a bill in a blind dart game and be sure of doing the right thing is simple: If you are going broke either way you might as well do so in better health.

Passing only an individual mandate is health-care reform that drops the part about reform and embraces the part about insurers getting a virtual monopoly on health care. Let’s call it the Insurance Company Protection Act.

No wonder Karen Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, or AHIP, has called off Harry and Louise, that whining couple who fretted over Hillarycare in a multimillion- dollar ad campaign 15 years ago. Insurers, along with hospitals and drugmakers, are thrilled by the prospect of 50 million new customers forced into their arms by the government.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=a9TUbTPPpdhg