Universal Health Care: Competition

The President claims one of the reasons we need a government run program is so that we get more competition going in the insurance market. That would be great if the competition were fair. But forgive me if I'm skeptical about how fair that competition would be. The government is the one setting all the rules, and in the insurance business there are lots of them. Now they also want to get out onto the field. Imagine if all the referees in the NBA got together and said, "We're starting our own team and we'll still be officiating all the games." Do you see the conflict of interest? Is it a foregone conclusion that the refs will cheat? No. Is it possible? Yes. Has our government ever done anything like this? *cough* Freddie and Fannie *\cough*

I would be all for a government run option if it could do the following things.

1. To start the taxpayers could give it a loan, but it must be repaid, lets say over ten years.
2. Besides the start up loan, no taxpayer subsidies. It has to sink and swim like everyone else on the premiums it collects. This includes paying the salaries of all the people that work for what would undoubtedly be a huge corporation. It also includes purchasing or paying rent for the office space they use. Paying for the office supplies, computers, servers, and infrastructure a huge company would need.
   
3. It has to live and die by the same rules as everyone else in the market. And those rules can't be changed just to favor the government insurer. That also means anything the government run plan can do, the private insurers can do too.

Is this possible? I don't think it is, but I think these are pretty reasonable requirements if there is going to be fair competition. That's why I don't think a government run insurer would be a fair competitor.

Government run businesses often run at a deficit for years and years, something a private company can't do. A private company would fail (or at least should be allowed to!) if it ran like that. It's like the government and government business play by a different set of rules.

For instance, one of the cool things the government option could do is enroll a really large group of people (from all over the country) to help spread the risk. This is something the private insurers can't do. Our government has restricted private health insurers from insuring outside of their state, which limits how big a pool they can enroll from. Would that be changed if we started a government option? I doubt it, but that would be unfair competition. The purpose of more competition is to bring costs down. Why don't we just remove this restriction? That would bring down costs.

Currently our government dictates the minimal amount of things a health insurer has to insure. Which means you can't purchase just catastrophic insurance (which would bring down the cost). If we really want to bring down costs, why don't we remove that restriction?

Because government businesses don't play by the same rules as private industry, people are wary of a government run health insurer. Unfair competition means the private insurers would have a tough time staying in the industry. I think that as the government option got stronger, the private options would find it harder and harder to compete, until they were eliminated and then ta-da! Single-payer system! Which has been amazing for Canada and the UK. I don't know about you but waiting months to see a doctor and then getting in the back of the line to get the actual treatment I need sounds fantastic. And then if there's any kind of healthcare crisis, the care rationing will be sweet. I just hope I'm not old when that crisis hits, I'm not looking forward to that state-sponsored dirt nap.