The Public Health Care Option--An Open Letter to Republicans

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Open Letter to Republicans
In Response to Their Talking Points Against Public Health Care

Dear Senators Alexander, McConnell, McCain, Representatives Canter, Boehner, et al:

I have appreciated hearing your various arguments against the public health care option in this lively debate for Health Care Reform. It strikes me that in your “defense” of the American people, you are actually continuing to showcase yourselves as the “Party of No” without having any ideas to counter with, but more importantly, you are misleading us—your constituents, the American People—by pretending that your defense of allies and contributors is actually action for our benefit.

Is Our Free Enterprise System Perfect

Your first talking point presents the public health option as the elephant in the room with private insurance companies running around like mice. Senator Alexander presumed that after a few days the elephant will squash the mice. I have found this analogy very telling about the Republican’s confidence in the U.S. free enterprise system.

Being a graduate of the Wharton School of Business, I learned that free enterprise is adaptable to change (by the mechanism of supply and demand), in order to maintain the goal of profit maximization. If the free enterprise system is adaptable, then wouldn’t it follow that if demand from consumers (the American People) rises¬—based on the introduction of a new health plan—in order to compete the private insurance companies will need to supply a new plan to counter the demand from the new “competitor.” The insurance companies will continue to maximize their profit margins within the framework of the new demand, and the new plans that they will be supplying. If the American free enterprise system is adaptable, then two things may happen with the new health plans that are offered: the insurance companies’ profit margins will be reduced somewhat, the less efficient insurance companies will either get out of the market or go out of business because they cannot compete.

If our free enterprise system is not adaptable then a new low cost, and public health option will squash the private insurers like mice. But this is not what has happened with our Medicare system, which is a fairly successful plan. Insurance companies have found a way to compete with Medicare and each other by offering Medigap plans—which I am sure you will agree are fairly profitable to them.

If our free enterprise system is adaptable, then it seems to me that the Republican party wants the current plans offered by the private insurance companies to remain in place. These current plans, and the business models on which they are based, represent the status quo of a system that’s broken. Yet, this same broken system enables the private insurance companies and their shareholders to maintain their high profit margins.



Public Health Care—A Debt Burden

Your second talking point assumes that the American People and their grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be bankrupted, or at the very least burdened with a huge debt due to public health care.

First of all, the people of Canada, England, Sweden, Russia, China are not burdened with a huge debt, and have successful and well-run public health plans. All those countries mentioned have much lower debt to GDP ratios than the US—and that’s with a public health care option.

Secondly, the debt you are speaking about is a very indirect one. President Obama has stated that this plan will cost about $1 trillion over the next ten (10) years. This money will come from taxes, which are usually deducted from the paychecks of the American People. The American People won’t see significantly smaller paychecks as a result of this $1 trillion price tag. The American People and foreign investors will see new Treasury Bond issues to raise money over the next ten years, which will then be repaid out of taxes in the years to come. U.S. Treasury Bills, or Bonds, are the most secure financial instrument in the world—even today, during this financial mess, people all over the world are flocking to buy T-Bills!

A more direct debt on the American People is the one that private insurance companies, and Big Pharma, have placed at each of our doorsteps. It’s burdening small and large businesses, causing them to raise their prices and become less competitive in the marketplace. In order to stay competitive, businesses are forced to shrink the health care plans they provide to their employees by reducing the options available: choosing plans with higher deductibles, fewer options, and less comprehensive care. In the end, it’s the hard-working American People that suffer and are forced to seek health care outside of the health care plans offered.

On the other hand, we as individuals may need to have our own health plan, either because the company we work for can no longer afford to carry those benefits, we are retired, or are self-employed entrepreneurs (like me). If we can afford the huge premiums that the insurance companies charge, we’re lucky. If not, we fall out of the system. If we can afford the premiums, and some health crisis happens in our family, frequently the private insurance companies are going to deny that claim. That means we have to charge that health care service to our credit cards, take out a second mortgage on our homes, or even sell our homes. And now we, the American People, are burdened with a very real, and direct, debt to the same credit card and financial companies that have led us down this road of financial distress the last several months. We, the American People, didn’t want this debt, but we had the misfortune of getting sick, and the private insurance companies who said they would protect us from financial disaster, turned their back on us. Not only did they turn their back on us by denying our claims, but some of those same companies have accepted billions of the American People’s money to save themselves from the ruin they put us in. It’s this very real and direct debt that places a burden on the competitiveness of big and small businesses, as well as on the sanity, stress level, and well-being of each of the American People.

Profits or People

So, my fellow Americans, it seems the real question about the public health care option is whether you support the American People (whom you were elected by to protect and serve), or support the high profit margins of Big Pharma, private insurance companies, and the continued usurial practices of credit card and financial companies.

Sincerely, and in Good Health,

Robert Rex