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The Public Option is Nothing to Worry About
One of the most controversial parts of President Obama’s healthcare proposals is the public option. It’s also badly needed. Nonetheless, the insurance industry and conservatives and Congress are fighting it tooth and nail.
The public option makes sense economically. Healthcare costs, as Obama noted in his press conference last week have risen 50% in 10 years. This is a crushing burden for businesses, large and small. Even in good times, high premiums cut into wages for workers. They also increase the cost of doing business, which make American companies less competitive with foreign firms. That’s the last thing a company needs in the midst of these challenging economic times. Why do pro-business Republicans want to oppose something that would lower costs for businesses?
Even people who choose private insurance will benefit from a public option. In order to draw people to their plans, private insurers will have to do one of two things. Either they will have to offer more affordable premiums, or they will have to offer greatly expanded services at current rates to convince consumers that their plans have an added value. That could mean reduced instances of private insurers doing all they can to deny legitimate claims.
I can understand concerns about expanding the size of the budget deficit at a time when we have so much debt already. But the money we currently spend on healthcare is a huge burden as it is. In 2008 alone, we spent $2.4 trillion on healthcare. That number is expected to rise to $4.3 trillion by 2016. In fact, the US spends six times more per capita on healthcare per person as western European countries that provide universal healthcare.
A good public option that provides more affordable premiums and coupled with other reforms like comparative effectiveness research can reduce that number to a more sustainable level.
Of course conservatives say that the public option will mean the end of private insurance in the US. But that need not be the case. They are most likely to point to Canada and the UK in making these arguments. But in the Netherlands and France, private insurers do exist. In France for example, 80% have supplemental private insurance to help cover co-pays.
There is a chance that government ends up being as wasteful and inefficient as conservatives claim. In that case, people will turn to private insurers. And to win over consumers, those insurers will have to offer either cheaper premiums, or better services. True we might have wasted a fair bit of money, but then the way we do healthcare currently is bankrupting us. And at least we’d cover everyone even if costs are high; as it is, we don’t even do that with our high costs.
Then of course, there is the argument about rationing. A government option will lead to some federal bureaucrat in Washington DC deciding whether Grandma gets hip replacement surgery. What those making this argument frequently fail to mention is that we already have rationing. Millions of people a year receive no health insurance because they can’t afford it. Unless Grandma has a gold-plated insurance plan, or lots of extra money lying around, she isn’t getting the hip replacement under the current scheme.
Exploding costs also make us ration in other ways. Having to pay $10,000 a year for family coverage means that working and middle class families must cut back in other ways, such as saving for a child’s college education. A public option could relieve the strain on these families.
The public option is truly nothing to fear.
-Marcus Gadson
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