Many Americans favor a public plan in principle, but the real question is, do they support it if it will raise their taxes, increase their health insurance premiums or increase the deficit?
Think about how much money you and your employer spend on your health care.
Nationwide, that is a SHIT-PILE of money!
Even poorly managed it would go a long way to paying for health care if the private insurance profits were removed from the equation.
-Joe
From what I've seen by looking at some annual reports of large health insurance companies, profits as a percentage of gross revenues average only about 3%, so if that's the only argument for a public plan, it's not much of an argument. You could argue that administrative costs as a percentage of revenues appear to be significantly lower for our existing public plan, Medicare, than for private insurance companies, but some of that difference appears to be the result of differences in accounting between the government and the private sector and when you factor in the higher returns private plans get from their investments than Medicare gets from its Treasuries, it's not at all clear that a public plan offering the same coverage as a private plan would be significantly cheaper unless the rates were kept artificially low and this would mean either higher taxes or larger deficits.
On the contrary, there is good reason to think a coverage from a public plan would cost more than from a private plan because there would be tremendous political pressure to include the expanded benefits and terms of service Obama has advocated in a public plan, such as accepting pre existing conditions at standard rates and expanded mental health benefits. Including these expanded benefits and terms of service would make the public plan more expensive than private plans, having the effect that only those with pre existing conditions or in need of extensive mental health benefits or other expanded benefits would choose the public plan, thus further driving up its costs. There are only two ways the government could keep the public plan price competitive with private plans: raise taxes or incur larger deficits to keep premiums artificially low or require all employers to provide the same expanded coverage the public plan did, thus raising the cost of health insurance for US companies and their employees and making US companies less competitive with foreign companies with all the negative economic consequences this would entail.
Also worrisome is the fact that our current public plan, Medicare, will go broke in about five years, according to the last estimate I've seen, because Congress has irresponsibly yielded to political pressure for years and not raised the payroll taxes that are supposed to fund Medicare high enough to keep it solvent, and now these same politicans want us to believe they will behave responsibly if they are allowed to create a new public plan.
Obama wants to rush this thing through Congress so you will not have time to think about these things.
Ok. now add to that 3% for the shareholders (which is significant on its own) the costs to maintain the executive class, the costs for the lawyers needed to keep from paying claims, advertising, public relations and let's not forget government lobbying efforts, (that alone would pay for a few pre-existing conditions).
These are just the first few off the top of my head... Can you think of more health-care premium dollars that would be better spent on patient care?
The only difference between a private bureaucracy and a public bureaucracy is that the private one costs more and does a better job of skimming money off the top. That should say something in this country!
-Joe