The Private Option | The Next Right

The Private Option The Next Right

Face it, universal health care folks, your arguments just don't hold water.

Democrats argue that a Public Option won't crowd out private health
insurance. It will just give them "healthy" competition. I'm
skeptical, in large part because the government can and will simply legislate
away the normal aspects of competition (the need to balance the books, to make
cost/benefit calculations, and to negotiate on price/quality, rather than on
"...or else we'll regulate you into submission"). Policies designed to
keep down health care spending will not survive against politicians up for
reelection.
The people responsible for Trillion dollar deficits are
unlikely to usher in an era of health care spending restraint.
Other
Democrats have just come right out and acknowledged that a public
option would eventually crowd out private health insurance.

A public insurance plan able to use Medicare's
bargaining power to secure deep discounts for its customers and ensure the
maximum possible network would be cheaper and more efficient than private
insurers. Over time, this increased efficiency would make the plan more
attractive because it could offer more coverage for less money. As consumers
recognized this fact, they would increasingly migrate towards the plan, and the
public insurer would become, if not a de facto single payer system, something
close to it. The public insurer, in this scenario, is a game changer. [...]
Insurers, predictably, howled that a public insurer with access to Medicare's
market power would put them out of business. (Generally speaking, liberals
agreed with that.)
Still other Democrats have pointed to the education system
as an example of universal coverage with private alternatives. On Twitter, Pandagon's Jesse Taylor argued that a Public Option
wouldn't affect private insurance...
What healthcare choice can you exercise
right now that a.) would be gone under a public option and b.) couldn't be taken
away currently?
Politicians who make this argument should be confronted with
this question: What school choice can you exercise right now that would be gone
if we had vouchers and school choice for everybody?