I have read the rest of this thread and I didn't see a clear answer to this.
The answer is that the complaint is wrong, because a government option wouldn't provide "unfair competition." Like the commercial health insurance companies, the government's health insurance program would be self-funded (as in, funded by premiums).
I disagree, not because you're wrong (I think you're right), but because this is an illustration of the very wrongness I'm protesting with my letter. You're actually trying to answer their question. I think that even engaging that question is falling for the trap, the smokescreen that misleads us away from the questions we should care about.
If we start arguing that no, it's not actually unfair competition, they can come back niggling at the details and explaining why they think it would be unfair competition, and there's no real way to prove that wrong. The point here isn't who can convince who, the point is that they're trying to bog us down into a debate about whether this would or would not be fair competition between the public option and the insurance companies.
That is fundamentally a wrong debate to engage in. It stems from their arrogant sense of entitlement, that somehow the health of private for-profit insurance companies is important, and that it should be our goal to avoid unfairly competing with them. As long as we continue having that debate, we're on their ground, and thus, we're losing.
It's important to stop trying to answer that question. That's my point. It's the wrong question. IT FUNDAMENTALLY DOESN'T MATTER. Even if they're "wrong", saying so is part of falling into their trap.
no subject
I have read the rest of this thread and I didn't see a clear answer to this.
The answer is that the complaint is wrong, because a government option wouldn't provide "unfair competition." Like the commercial health insurance companies, the government's health insurance program would be self-funded (as in, funded by premiums).
I disagree, not because you're wrong (I think you're right), but because this is an illustration of the very wrongness I'm protesting with my letter. You're actually trying to answer their question. I think that even engaging that question is falling for the trap, the smokescreen that misleads us away from the questions we should care about.
If we start arguing that no, it's not actually unfair competition, they can come back niggling at the details and explaining why they think it would be unfair competition, and there's no real way to prove that wrong. The point here isn't who can convince who, the point is that they're trying to bog us down into a debate about whether this would or would not be fair competition between the public option and the insurance companies.
That is fundamentally a wrong debate to engage in. It stems from their arrogant sense of entitlement, that somehow the health of private for-profit insurance companies is important, and that it should be our goal to avoid unfairly competing with them. As long as we continue having that debate, we're on their ground, and thus, we're losing.
It's important to stop trying to answer that question. That's my point. It's the wrong question.
IT FUNDAMENTALLY DOESN'T MATTER. Even if they're "wrong", saying so is part of falling into their trap.