Normally, you'd expect someone interested in the workings of business to be against anything like a public option in health care. I don't fit that profile. And, in fact, I consider the lack of a public option to be doing a huge disservice to small entrepreneurs and their employees.
Before I go any further, I insist upon making the (rather substantial) distinction between "public option" (which I understand to be an individual health insurance plan purchased through a state or federal government, rather than an individual broker) and a state-run medical system. The fact that this is such a huge semantic gulf, yet people (deliberately or ignorantly) conflate the two is pathetic, really. So let's just get that out of the way and move on, okay?
To me, here's where a public option really hits home:
- How many Americans have been unemployed long enough for the limit on their skimpy stop-gap personal insurance policy to run out? I know I've come close.
- How many unemployed Americans had to take those policies (and pay the whole multi-month premium up-front at a time when they're clamping down on expenditures) because the COBRA premiums were insultingly high--what's known in any trade as "FU pricing?" I know I have.
- How many still employed Americans are holding on to rather sucky jobs because their spouse's employer doesn't offer health insurance coverage? I certainly wouldn't call my job "sucky," but it's preventing me from dropping my hours to pursue other activities.
- How many boot-strapped start-ups have lost (or missed the opportunity to hire) key talent because the insurance companies didn't want the bother of their chump-change business? I've worked for one, and I know another quite well.
- How many small companies or freelancers are being further squeezed (during a recession, no less) by spiking premiums? I know one whose individual family insurance policy is going up 64% in the next year.
- How much are you and I adding to our tax bill when mega-corporations push their low-wage employees onto public assistance because they won't use their considerable financial leverage to offer a reasonably-priced health plan? I think you know who I'm talking about.
Let's face it: It's cheaper to treat a problem at the front end than it is at the back end. Anyone knows that. The interest on writing an IOU to your health is exorbitant, even by credit card standards.
All I'm asking for is the OPTION--and I cannot, for the life of me, believe how the word "option" is deliberately construed as "mandate"-- to purchase a comparable health insurance plan at somewhere close to what my employer and I, between us, are paying now. That's it. Surely, if you subscribe to "capitalism," you can't argue with the fact that economies of scale reduce prices. Were state or national plans to buy "blocks" of insurance policies and resell them, or to manage their own risk pools comprised of millions of individuals, shouldn't that help to keep a lid on administrative costs? And, of course, if you call yourself a capitalist, you have to agree that competition likewise brings down prices...riiiiiigt?
Obviously, offering that option can be done well, poorly or indifferently. If people could discuss this subject without the out-and-out lies about Stephen Hawking and "death panels," and packing heat and going all Godwin in the process, I'd call the passion productive. That's the infuriating nonsense I was weaseling out of by keeping my hands off the subject. But even some losing battles are worth the fighting. And as much as I dislike risking the bad opinion of people I like and look up to, I much prefer that to giving corporate and political interests that I utterly detest the consent of my silence.
---
*Many, many thanks to @KickTime for the shot of courage.
