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Notes -
Let me apologize for the tone of my recent posts on this topic, which were really dumb Twitter-tier reactions and don't reflect either my values or the standards of this place.
Yes, and I'm saying this is a good thing, and the percentage should be higher. It's a fair point that the public option is unlikely to increase efficiency, but increasing efficiency isn't really the goal for me. I like the idea of a public option because it means giving money to the government that is constrained by the Constitution, the courts, administrative procedure, etc... while giving money to a private insurer, while they absolutely are regulated to death, means giving money to a party whose entire purpose is to take as much of your money as it can legally get away with while giving you as little in return as they can legally get away with. It's the alignment of incentives I find disconcerting, not the level of efficiency.
I don't agree with the "healthcare is a human right" thing, but I do believe that it's right for society as a whole to shoulder the burden to take care of people who are vulnerable, struggling, chronically ill, etc. I put social welfare policies, particularly surrounding healthcare, in the same basket of public goods as roads, bridges, police officers, defense -- it's part of the fundamental social fabric that enables people to live at all, and shouldn't be subject to the whims of the market.
To be clear, my view on the Republican party on this issue is not that conservative voters examined the evidence closely and made a cost-benefit analysis, it's that conservative voters hate the idea of the public option because it's the government doing stuff, and there's an axiomatic belief among Republicans that the public sector is inherently inferior that is just as dogmatic as the belief among Democrats that the private sector is always exploitative.
Despite what my strong feelings on healthcare may suggest, I'm not actually particularly dogmatic on economic issues: except to say that I believe what should be done is the option that empowers ordinary people to live the best and most fulfilling lives as is possible. There are some areas where giving people more choices and the freedom to make decisions in a free market gives them the most power -- but likewise there are other areas where the amount of knowledge and wisdom a person would have to accumulate to make a judicious choice is so ludicrously high that people do need government officials to regulate away bad choices and build a system where people have the legal right to be treated fairly.
If that means trickle-down in one case, fine, if that means government monopoly in another, great, if that means single payer in one context, sure, if that means tax breaks at one point, I'm all for it. I'm apparently being an economic progressive today, so I'll throw some meat to the fiscal conservatives in the audience and say I think most concerns about corporate greed are silly, and price increases usually reflect underlying economic variables. Price fixing in particular is the worst possible solution to any economic problem.
I'm happy to agree with the more libertarian side of the fence that our current system is regulated to death and has the worst aspects of both private and government-run healthcare, but I don't see the solution being deregulation and turning healthcare into a McDonald's menu where people have to price-match and pay for add-ons in times of extreme time-pressure, information asymmetry, and profound emotional and physical stress. If there's any time whatsoever where we can be absolutely sure people aren't Homo economicus, it's when they have to make serious decisions that affect the life, death, and serious suffering of themselves or a loved one.
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