Letter to the Editor
Last night, I submitted this as a letter to the editor to USA Today:
- For decades, private for-profit insurance companies have been spreading fear about "government run health insurance". Despite the fact that people on Medicare - run by the government - are more satisfied with their insurance than people on private insurance, the private insurance companies have been telling us that national health care wouldn't work, because the government can't run a good insurance system, and we're all better off with private insurance. Obama's plan puts their claims to the test, and it's time to put up or shut up.
Obama proposes a compromise between a national single payer system, and the private insurance we have now: he wants to put a public health insurance option in the same market as private companies, to let people choose and see what works better.
Insurance companies' complaints about "unfair competition" are a smokescreen. They want to mislead us into a conversation about how to be fair to insurance companies, while they continue being unfair to the American people.
What the for-profit insurance companies are really saying is that they fear the government can run a better health insurance - that satisfies people more, and leaves us healthier, at a lower cost. They may be right. Congress owes it to us to create a public option so we can try it and find out. Stop worrying about the health of the insurance companies, and care for the health of the American people for a change.
no subject
This plan, which started out more or less as John Edwards' proposals, has been floating around in public debate for several years now. The specific bills have been hashed out in Congress for almost half a year, and aren't likely to be passed for a few more months. The issue of reforming health care has been a pressing problem for decades, and extensively debated. I can't fathom what value there might be in slowing it all down even further, except as a subset of "let's just never do it, let's only talk about it forever".