You state the issue succintly and I agree with your statement, except for the first sentence: What you're describing is exactly the smokescreen I'm talking about. Of course it might be "unfair competition" to private insurance companies, and if they can't compete with it, they might fail. Who the fuck cares?
Let them all fail miserably if they can't stand up to this "unfair competition" for good, reasonable, structural reasons. All that would mean is that private health insurance was never a good idea to begin with. Or, maybe they'll get creative and find ways to survive. Some of them might even thrive with new business models, perhaps providing extra services for those who can afford it, or perhaps doing the same thing the public option does even better than it does. That'd be great too.
It's not that the claims are "untrue" - I very much hope the claims are true. What I fear is that they'll manage to hobble the public option so that it doesn't have structural advantages over for-profit insurance. I expect it to take years of work to make that not happen. But assuming all their claims are true, and the public option would indeed have all the advantages over private insurance that the insurance companies and Republicans claim it would: Great! That's exactly the point!
That's what I mean when I say we're being misled into having a discussion about how to be fair to insurance companies. It's as if the commercial success of private for-profit insurance companies were the goal here, rather than merely a rather flawed means to an end that we might choose to replace if it doesn't turn out to work well enough.
Edit: I also want to add that, economically speaking, if it turns out that private insurance companies cannot compete with a decent, strong public insurance, then that will clearly make the case that private health insurance companies represent a misdirection of economic activity away from more useful purposes. That is, it would mean that if everyone currently making a profit at providing health insurance were to instead redirect their efforts to other endeavors, they'd create more economic value. Or, in other words yet again, it would mean that we're currently wasting money paying people to waste their time, effort, and talents on something that isn't contributing to our happiness and well being nearly as much as whatever else those people would otherwise be doing with their time, effort, and talents if we didn't require private health insurance companies (and thus require our economy to use up a lot of people's time, effort, and talents to provide us with such companies).
no subject
Let them all fail miserably if they can't stand up to this "unfair competition" for good, reasonable, structural reasons. All that would mean is that private health insurance was never a good idea to begin with. Or, maybe they'll get creative and find ways to survive. Some of them might even thrive with new business models, perhaps providing extra services for those who can afford it, or perhaps doing the same thing the public option does even better than it does. That'd be great too.
It's not that the claims are "untrue" - I very much hope the claims are true. What I fear is that they'll manage to hobble the public option so that it doesn't have structural advantages over for-profit insurance. I expect it to take years of work to make that not happen. But assuming all their claims are true, and the public option would indeed have all the advantages over private insurance that the insurance companies and Republicans claim it would: Great! That's exactly the point!
That's what I mean when I say we're being misled into having a discussion about how to be fair to insurance companies. It's as if the commercial success of private for-profit insurance companies were the goal here, rather than merely a rather flawed means to an end that we might choose to replace if it doesn't turn out to work well enough.
Edit: I also want to add that, economically speaking, if it turns out that private insurance companies cannot compete with a decent, strong public insurance, then that will clearly make the case that private health insurance companies represent a misdirection of economic activity away from more useful purposes. That is, it would mean that if everyone currently making a profit at providing health insurance were to instead redirect their efforts to other endeavors, they'd create more economic value. Or, in other words yet again, it would mean that we're currently wasting money paying people to waste their time, effort, and talents on something that isn't contributing to our happiness and well being nearly as much as whatever else those people would otherwise be doing with their time, effort, and talents if we didn't require private health insurance companies (and thus require our economy to use up a lot of people's time, effort, and talents to provide us with such companies).