Obama Admits Government Can't Compete

Among other things, this post explains
why the House bill effectively outlaws private insurance.

Quoting Obama:

“It’s the Post Office that’s always having problems”

HT: The Astute Bloggers & The Heritage Foundation
(Please examine both entries.)
Those who assert that the private sector cannot compete against the government are only partially correct. Yes, it is an unlevel playing field. Yes, unlike the private sector, government can operate at a loss indefinitely -- witness Amtrak.

But, Amtrak is an anomaly. Nobody in the private sector is fool enough to think that passenger rail travel is, today, a viable business model. So, the government has no competition in this area. It just happily pours taxpayer money into this anachronistic, atavistic money pit year after year after year.

Health insurance is a different beast. Clearly, providing health insurance is a viable business model for the private sector. This presents a real problem for the single most inefficient and ineffective method ever devised for the delivery of any goods and/or any services. As Obama freely admits, government is entirely incapable of competing with the private sector.

But, once our politicians create this “public option” for the delivery of health care, they will be committed to maintaining that “option”. Since government is clearly incapable of competing with the private sector, how will the politicians ensure the perpetuation of this “option”?

They will do it the only way they can -- through force of law enforced at gunpoint.

Doubt me? Then you must not know that is EXACTLY what Canada did -- and similar language is ALREADY WRITTEN INTO THE HOUSE BILL!

Our own National Institutes of Health knows this is true, as does the Canadian Medical Association Journal (who published this paper):

“Private insurance for medically necessary hospital and physician services is illegal in only 6 of the 10 [Canadian] provinces. Nonetheless, a significant private sector has not developed in any of the 4 provinces that do permit private insurance coverage. The absence of a significant private sector is probably best explained by the prohibitions on the subsidy of private practice by public plans, measures that prevent physicians from topping up their public sector incomes with private fees…

Six of the 10 provinces (Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Prince Edward Island and Quebec) prohibit contracts of private insurance to cover the kinds of services that are publicly funded.54,55,56,57,58,59 All of the provinces that prohibit private insurance do so by prohibiting any person from entering into a contract that covers publicly insured health services. Four of these provinces (British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario and Prince Edward Island) also explicitly void any part of an insurance contract that covers the kinds of services covered by the public plan.”

In other words, 6 of Canada’s 10 provinces made it flat out illegal to directly compete with the government health care system. The remaining 4 Canadian provinces made it effectively illegal to directly compete with the government health care system.

Think it won’t happen here? It is ALREADY WRITTEN INTO THE HOUSE BILL!

Quoting IBDEditorials:

“It didn't take long to run into an ‘uh-oh’ moment when reading the House's ‘health care for all Americans’ bill. Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal.”

The Heritage Foundation takes a more nuanced route to the same conclusion:

“IBD is wrong: individual health insurance will not be outlawed. But it will be effectively regulated out of existence… which is effectively the same thing.”

So, the bill already under consideration in the House, does effectively the very same thing which 4 of Canada’s 10 provinces did -- makes it effectively illegal for private insurance to compete directly with the so-called “option” provided by the government.

But, given what Obama admits in the video, what other “option” would be available which would allow for the survival of the single worst method ever devised for the delivery of ANY goods and/or ANY services?

It seems our politicians actually have learned from the follies of Canadian Socialists (in the most perverse way possible).

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