The only problem with the public option would be if it were funded by taxes not premiums and then was under-funded because cowardly legislators didn't raise taxes enough to cover all costs. What is really needed is a comparison of current private costs and projected public costs. Obama claims that costs would be reduced on balance, and he makes a good case. In other words, the projected $1 trillion cost would probably be less than what we pay now--not to the government, but to the healthcare "system." The reason insurers will do anything they can to stymie reform, is that their over-sized profits would be downsized.
They should be. A whole industrial sector should not be predicated on the heartbreak and misfortunes of the American people. Health care should be a right, not an expensive privilege.
In an ideal world, we might have something like single-payer, but obviously, with the political uproar over a simple public option, single payer is not politically feasible. One of the arguments of the conservatives against a public option, however, is that it would crowd out private insurers; that we'd end up with single payer. If private insurance companies can't compete against it, then we will have single payer, but if private insurers can't compete against it, then they don't deserve to be in business.
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