"Another option, favoured by many Democrats and the president, is for the government to step in with a results-based plan of its own, to compete against the private industry.
"Mr Obama should use it as a threat, rather than implement it now. If the private sector does not meet certain cost-cutting targets in, say, five years, a public-sector plan should automatically kick in. Such a prospect would encourage hospitals and doctors to accept a painful but necessary reform now."
— The Economist
A dose of prescribed reading on reform at The Economist
Wrong.
That's a philosophical argument about pseudo-liberal market incentive that has nothing to do with what's happening on the ground.
HillaryCare served notice to the megalo-conglomerate corporate medical complex in 1993, and the industry has done nothing but make matters worse since then. We're NOT starting this argument over again from scratch, as if the industry has been caught off guard by the problem
The GOP and healthcare industry SAID they could do better but promptly wrought inarguable greed: 50 million are uninsured while countless numbers buy HIGH-premium, HIGH-deductible, LOW-service plans that reap billions in profit for an industry that is completely unmoved by the plight of the sick and dying: the distressed, lame, and injured who they drive from their membership roles as soon as corporate cost is incurred.
It's just cruel by now to give the industry five MORE dreadful years to come around to their senses and offer something kind, caring, and intentionally effective.
"The sticker-shock for an insurance mandate is really just a reflection of the second big problem: the overall cost structure of American health care. Indeed, one of the worst things about Mr Obama’s oddly hands-off approach to health reform is that he is concentrating on a symptom, not the underlying disease."
Au contraire, mon frère.
- Obama speaks at leangth, saying, "The biggest thing we can do to hold down costs is to change the incentives of a health care system that automatically equates expensive care with better care," He said the formula system drives up costs "but doesn't make you better."
- The $1.5 trillion estimate from the Congressional Budget Office is based on Senate proposals that do not include Obama's public plan or the projected cost reductions that such an extraordinary force of competion would bring to the market.
This newspaper is NOT clear about the problem at all:
With the threat of healthcare reform on the table, everyone's costs are already accelerating. A number of friends have gotten their notification of this increase in the mail, because the industry is gouging the population in anticipation of the regulation and competition with which you suggest the industry ought to be threatened.
THAT's how this industry responds to the threat of government competition, by getting ahead of the inevitability of it through price hikes.
Your fair-warning scenario has ALREADY played out, and it's time to fix healthcare for PEOPLE and patients, and forget about fixing it for a dysfunctional corporate oligarchy that has held the Pursuit of Life and miracle of healing in a greedy death-grip for so friggin' long.
"If it is as easy as you describe for the nasty, greedy healthcare industry, why don't you take some of your capital and risk it in the business? This question can go to anyone that thinks that this or any other corporate industry is nothing but greedy. In short get off your high horse and do something constructive, take a risk."
— Sackmaster's response on The Economist
Isn't that exactly what we're doing when we say we should all collectively invest in the best public health system possible?
We're capitalizing a public healthcare system and spreading the risk across a society that WILL benefit together by covering everyone.
That's everyone taking a risk, and there's no high horse in saying that the current system is leaving SO many people behind.
I would suspect the ironic argument against the public option comes from those who DON'T want to take the risk and invest in constructive competition to the current industry of balkanized consumers and colluding proprietors
Tell me I'm on my high horse, but DON'T tell me the insurance industry has ANY interest in fixing this problem. When a large number of modern industrialized countries do this better, at half the cost, it's obvious my high horse has a valid point to make.
To the insurance industry and its culture of life-defying greed, I say, "Neigh!"
Indeed, I agree and welcome your theory: we each should invest our capital gladly, those that have any, and risk it in the most constructive, competitive public healthcare sector ever.
We're on the same page after all, you see.
Read more responses to this story on The Economist
