Save the public option!

I'm dismayed that the Obama Administration is already backing down from including a public insurance option as part of healthcare reform. Without a public option, it will be reform in name only, and our broken healthcare system won't be fixed.

The “public option,” a new government insurance program akin to Medicare, has been a central component of Mr. Obama’s agenda for overhauling the health care system, but it has also emerged as a flashpoint for anger and opposition. Kathleen Sebelius, the health and human services secretary, said the public option was “not the essential element” for reform and raised the idea of the co-op during an interview on CNN.

Mr. Obama himself sought to play down the significance of the public option at a town-hall-style meeting on Saturday in Grand Junction, Colo., when a university student challenged him on how private insurers could compete with the government.

After strongly defending the public plan, the president suggested that he, too, viewed it as only a small piece of a broader initiative intended to control costs, expand coverage, protect consumers and make the delivery of health care more efficient.

No no no. The public option is the essential element. The best way to "control costs, expand coverage, protect consumers and make the delivery of health care more efficient" is to have a public option which will force private insurers to be more competitive. This will benefit both those who are currently uninsured (who will gain coverage) and those (myself included) who already have employer-provided private insurance, who will gain from more comprehensive coverage and controlled growth of policy premiums.

And the argument that "a public plan would invariably drive private insurers out of business and prompt employers to drop private coverage" doesn't hold either. The insurance companies are already in such a position of strength that even a few million people migrating to the the public plan won't bankrupt them, but should instead spur them to be more efficient and negotiate more vigorously with pharmaceutical companies and hospitals instead of just passing along higher costs to employers and individuals. This will make their health plan offerings more affordable, and make them more palatable to employers, who will thus be more likely to continue providing coverage to workers.

What's wrong with a little competition, anyway? Isn't that what capitalism is all about? What are the private insurers afraid of, other than the days of their being able to print money coming to an end?

I would like every conservative politician who rails against the so-called "government takeover of healthcare" to immediately renounce Medicare and Medicaid and demand the immediate termination of those programs. Those politicians would be lucky to suffer no more than simply losing their next election - but instead, I think it's more likely they'd be greeted in their home districts by angry constituent seniors armed with torches and pitchforks, with tarring and feathering suddenly coming back into vogue.