Welp… the House of Representatives voted on, and passed Health Care Reform. Read all about it. This marks yet another hurdle passed in what seems like an endless chain of difficulties. But I suppose no one figured this would be easy. Just ask Bill Clinton.
The hard part with the House bill is that it includes the dreaded… PUBLIC OPTION! Over in the Senate Harry Reid has pledged to produce a bill with the PO as well, but that will be easier said than done. The trick to getting this done is the built in state by state opt-out. This means that should all this hubbub actually get signed into law, if you live in a red state you might not have the ability to buy into a government run healthcare program.
Now to a lot of people the public option is a scary thought. There is a good article in the Oct 31st Economist discussing the possibility that a public option might put private insurance providers out of business, leaving us with universal socialized healthcare. But at the same time I’ve also heard the prediction that a public option wouldn’t address the underlying issues of how healthcare costs have become so outrageous, turning into a disastrously costly government venture. Arguments against the program for two completely opposite reasons.
Theoretically the public option is meant to be just a tool providing the government with a method of injecting a reasonably priced healthcare program into markets to compete with overinflated private insurance companies. But the potential effectiveness of it is very questionable. Here’s why the opt-out is a pleasant add-on in my eyes: Without a hard public option mandate we can ease our fears of a full government takeover and being stuck with a money bloodletting program. It removes our complete obligation to what is essentially an experiment while we still get to see the results.
I can dig.
- Dick Harvey
