Could the "Public Option" become a back door way to get to Single Payer?

[Tom Rinaldo]

Conservatives fear it would, while Progressives hope it does. And Conservatives use the hopes of Progressives to validate their fears about the Public Option. All of this however misses what, in an alternate universe, should be a Republican talking point: Let the market decide.

Competition is the holy grail of conservative ideology; throw a market bushel of choices at the consumer and see which ones stick, and may the best products or services win. If some consumers opt for "public option" insurance and suffer a fate worse than their neighbors who buy private insurance instead, they are unlikely to silently nurse their grudges while continuing to pay through the nose for inferior services. At least that's how free market ideology, Conservative Republican ideology, explains it. The "Public Option" would get battered on the free market if it fails to deliver the goods. And that would be as it should be according to Republicans.

But what about the converse? If Public Option insurance excels, in a relative sense, at meeting consumer needs at a highly competitive cost, shouldn't it's "market share" then grow accordingly? And if a "Public Option" plan flat out whoops the competition, why should that competition continue to be propped up by a government insistence that it continue to be the provider of choice for the American people? That would be a case of heavy handed government intervention in the market place; call it communism, socialism or fascism, or whatever the Right chooses to rail against this month.

Are Conservatives fearful of free competition? Funny, FedEx never seemed to fear the Post Office. Has the public suffered because the Post Office continues to exist even though we now have alternate private service providers like FedEx? Isn't the private sector supposed to be lean and mean and far more responsive to customer needs than anything a government bureaucrat manages to get his fingerprints on?

I know what the Right will say, they'll say "government will rig the competition in favor of the public sector" but that misses two key points. The first is simple; that simply isn't the way it's worked for decades. The public sector always cleans up the messes that the private sector leaves us with, while more and more sectors of our economy have been "privatized". How many banks have we bailed out over the last decade? But the second point is even simpler. We live in a Democracy. Government is run by the elected Representatives of the American people. If government creates a rigged system that works against the interests of the American people, that government can be changed, via elections. And Republicans will have been handed a great issue to campaign on and win with if that indeed happens with heath care insurance.

Democracy has a built in fail safe switch; elections. Unlike consumers, business interests are never hard pressed to raise the money needed to make their case to the public or back the candidates they believe in. If the government screws up, change it. That's the American way. But when it legitimately serves the people, what's the problem?

So instead of overtly opposing the open competition of differing viewpoints and products in the free market, I challenge Republicans to use their oppositional strengths constructively. Embrace the Public Option, after all it offers consumers a wider range of choice and that's good, right? That lets the individual decide how to spend his or her own money, and that's good, right? Stop fighting the public option and instead concentrate on watchdogging to make sure that this upcoming competition is indeed fair, and un-rigged, for either side. And then may the best plan win.

[MNDemNY]

1. Shhh. Not so loud.

[Tom Rinaldo]

4. I wrote this OP after reading this piece in Politico...

"Mixed messages bolster GOP's case"
By CHRIS FRATES | 9/15/09 5:05 AM EDT

It’s one of the most persistent — and potent — Republican arguments against health reform: that President Barack Obama and fellow Democrats want a U.S. government takeover of health care.

And what evidence do they have to back it up?

Obama said so. Just check out YouTube....
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/27138.html

I think our "cover" is already blown, lol.

[SuperTrouper]

20. Yes, keep it down...

but you are on to something...

[PassingFair]

21. Ixnay on the anplay!

Pipe down!

[DrDan]

2. well . . . I think we had better get that PO-Lite passed

so we can have an option available to all.

What kind of reform do we have if we have an option that is available to only 5%? And we have a stretch to get that.

[eleny]

3. You can bet your bippee it is

[Oregone]

5. In a country where the Red Scare is still strong...

and "liberal" Congress members wont so much as consider touching single-payer with a ten foot pole, its likely those same Congress members will not vote for something that will be intelligently designed to evolve in single-payer on its own.

The only back-dooring that will be happen is when the government has its way with the people again.

[Laelth]

6. I don't think so.

I "hope" so, like the other Progressives referenced in the OP, but without a "robust" public option there will be no competition, and the end result will be only a massive Federal bail-out of the health insurance cabal paid for, principally, by the struggling middle class.

No, thank you.

:dem:

-Laelth

[Aramchek]

7. all good things in all good time

[kestrel91316]

8. Baby steps.........gotta start someplace.

[mvd]

9. I could be a start

Once the PO gets in, we could modify it. But if we get a bill with no public option, it could be a while before it's up for debate again.

And I think once people see the PO, they will like it. Some people decry government involvement because Medicare is expensive, but it's only expensive because of the fraud, overcharging and abuse done by pharmaceutical companies with prescription drugs, some doctors, and hospitals. Most people are very satisfied with Medicare.

[PurityOfEssence]

10. Not acknowledging this is a bit dishonest

I'm not talking about you, Tom; you're a veritable incarnation of sense and decency, but it IS a bit of a proving ground, and many people understand this.

It is quite amusing how those who keen and kvetch about market determinism want to close off competition. Unions, an obvious example of the interplay of market forces, are somehow dirty pool by nature to these people.

If private industry can't or won't provide what the people want, the government has every right to step in to fill the void, but not so to those who skew the mandate of government and throw out virtually all of the preamble of the Constitution to justify their neo-feudalism.

Ducking the issue doesn't help, and it's a thorny one: right-wingers claim that government has an unfair advantage because it doesn't have to be profitable, and can even operate one program at a huge loss. Yes, this is true, but this doesn't pass any credibility test when so many other industries have unfair advantages. Yet, to not acknowledge the credence of the argument does nobody any good. What we're continually experiencing in American Politics is that "our" side is completely accurate and fair, and the other side is flat out wrong and evil.

There's a lot going on with tinkering with such a huge sector of the economy, and there SHOULD BE: we're talking about people's very lives. We're talking about the viable employability of people, and we're talking about the huge cost of personal failure on us all. So many powerful forces are arrayed against any change; there's hardly any mention of the huge cost of advertising and the hit they'd take with major changes.

That's why I'm for major and sweeping change: "fine-tuning" and "patching" are hard enough and simply won't work very well. Lest we forget, too: people are getting increasingly disillusioned with government, which is a truly bad thing in a constituent republic. I don't want to live in a world of cynical scofflaws and hucksters gaming the system and skating from any responsibility, yet that's what we've become in the years since 1980.

Those who claim that this is a back-door way to create socialized medicine have a point; they should be countered with the argument that if for-profit industry wants to prevail and survive in this sector, it needs to provide the people with what they want. That's crapitalism, and they need to accept it and compete or be swept aside.

[dhpgetsit]

16. I think sweeping change could be implemented incrementally.

One example is the idea of lowering the eligibility age for Medicare in steps until it eventually covers everyone.

[David Zephyr]

11. Not if we don't ever even get the "back door".

First, let's get that "back door" which doesn't look like it will be there. It's more likely to be a "co-op" which won't provide a back door at all, but an escalator right back to the insurance cabal.

I support single-payer. We'll never get there in my lifetime.

Edit: K&R.

[Voltaire]

12. Problem is, these bastards who worship Capitalism

don't truly believe in competition do they? MONOPOLY is what they believe in, but they are addicted to lying to themselves and to you, so they bat their pious eyelashes at the idea of competition. Fuckers.

[RichGirl]

13. The Public Option is a choice.

If everyone who qualifies for it, chooses it, it would have to lead to single-payer. Once it's in and it's obvious, even to the right, that it's not the boogie man, that it was not forced on them...THEY will choose it because it's to their benefit. Then all the people, both left and right, who don't qualify and are paying the high prices for regular insurance, will demand it for everyone.

[Tom Rinaldo]

15. That's what I think too, but...

...if one were to believe Republican political bluster, government can't fix a pot hole 1/10th as well as private industry can. Their supposedly non ideological argument against the public option (when they aren't simply sputtering about "creeping socialism") is that the free market is simply a more effecient and effective means for delivering goods and services to the public. That is why they argue that almost everything would be better if it were privatized. Well, if they are right and we are wrong, then they should have nothing to fear from an honest public option - it's relative ineptness would simply prove their point and consumers would run from it.

[Sebastian Doyle]

14. If it's a REAL public option, like the one Howard Dean is talking about

..then yes, it would likely eventually evolve into single payer, because the corporate insurance companies would drive their own customer base away through their greed.

Dr. Dean used this type of strategy before.... he was the first governor to legalize civil unions for same sex couples in vermont, after that state's court ruling. By leaving the word "marriage" out of it, he bypassed the religious reich objection. The eventual result was that marriage equality not only came to Vermont, but most of the other states in that region as well. And even Iowa, which is nowhere near Vermont.

I'm thinking he's the real chess player here, and he's said as much. And being a non-practicing doctor who's married to a still-practicing doctor, as well as a former governor, I think his voice in the discussion is worth more than Tom Dasshole, Max Bluecross, and Kathleen DLCelius combined.

[TheKentuckian]

17. Of course it may. If the capitalist have been right then it won't.

The fact they are making a stink is damning on the bullcrap they've been pushing forever.

[GeorgeGist]

18. Single payer is way too disruptive ...

for no drama, obama.

[andym]

19. The success of a strong public option competing on "equal" grounds with private insurers

would be critical to the creation of new social programs/entitlements.

Since the early 70s, we are operating in an era where government is considered wasteful and entitlements considered ineffective. The triumph of a strong public option against private industry would change that.