Health care: Obama and Dems push for public option

July 6, 2:10 AMPortland Progressive ExaminerMichael Stone

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President Obama and Democrats are pushing for the creation of a public option, a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurance companies for the health care business of nearly 50 million people who are without insurance. A vast majority of Americans favor a public option.

The American people want health care reform, they want a public option. President Obama and the people recognize the moral imperative. Republicans seem unable to acknowledge the moral imperative, the simple fact that everyone deserves healthcare.

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) guaranteed a public health care option on CBS' Face The Nation. Schumer, Finance Committee member and one of the major health care players on Capitol Hill, guaranteed that there will be a government-managed health care insurance option in any legislation that emerges from the Senate.

Schumer on CBS' Face the Nation:

“Make no mistake about it, there will be a public option in the final bill – some form of it,”

“We want it to be a fair level playing field, but you need something to keep the big boys honest. And the only thing that really is out there is a public option. We don’t trust the private insurance companies left to their own devices, and neither do the American people.”

"Without a public option, you're going to have no competition,"

Congress should create a government-run insurance plan to compete with private ones. It is time to upset the sleazy relationship insurers and providers have devised for harvesting money from the companies that pay for health care. Private insurers operate in an industry like none other: Each year their costs rise 10% or so, and yet they still can hike profits simply by passing these costs along. A public plan would pressure them to cut their own costs and those of their providers.

Republicans claim private insurers would have difficulty competing with government. They complain the government doesn't need to make a profit like they do. Republicans worry the public option would put the insurers out of business. And that is the essence of the problem: Republicans worry more about the health of insurance companies more than the health of American citizens.

If private insurance companies can not compete with the public option the system may evolve into a single payer system. A public run single payer health care system is socialized medicine or universal health care, and this is what some fear. Yet the current system is broken. The byzantine bureaucracy of the health insurance companies are inefficient and expensive. Perhaps the world would be a better place without private health insurance companies.

Support the public option and acknowledge the moral imperative.