I was going to post this as one of the followup responses to my post a few days ago about the President's health care initiatives. But then I decided it warranted its own separate "headline".
In his speech to the joint session of Congress the other night, President Obama used the argument I had offered in that previous post, that they ought to be comparing the value of "public option" in health care to the existence of both public, government colleges and private (for profit) colleges. Yeah, President!
I never did claim, and still don't, that this was my exclusive idea or eve that I was the first person to think of it. But my blog post did occur several days before any of the networks or cable pundits had ever even thought of it or uttered the words. Therefore, I think I'm on safe ground to go ahead and claim ownership of the idea and to magnanimously share it with the President.
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Rereading this, I note that I probably didn't offer enough explanation of the tie-in. So, back to the college analogy. Public tax-supported colleges exist in probably every state alongside private and "for profit" colleges and universities. One would assume that if the arguments being floated by those opposing the health care "public option" were correct that government subsidized colleges would merely drive private universities out of business, suck all the oxygen out of the room. Why would college students and/or their major funding source (their parents) choose a college that charges $20G per year if Junior can receive a decent education at a state school for half that cost? The major argument would be quality of product. Maybe the private colleges would be simply on a different, higher plain than state schools. Yet, as we know, some state schools match private ones for quality of education by whatever measure you wish to use. That being the case, private higher education would simply wither and die, right? Hasn't happened. State schools DO compete, but private universities still find plenty of demand for their higher priced product.
So, in my opinion, Lieberman and the others who loudly declare that the health care "public option" would unfairly squeeze out private health insurance options are simply using bromides and cliches not grounded in solid facts and knowledge.
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