Jim, you’re right — Obama sees this as a victory because it’s a foot in the door to a full-blown universal health care plan. Any small step forward on this health care thing will lead to complete socialization of all health care. And we have these nitwit Republican Senators who think they have been victorious because they are denying a public option. All they did was put the frogs in the pot of water on the stove and promise to not turn on the burner.
Additionally, I heard some conservative-liberal debates on health care on the radio this morning. One left-wing commentator said something I am hearing a ton of lately: “The Republicans are supposed to be for markets and competition (haha), and here they are trying to stop competition in health care.”
The competition, he says, is the government’s new plan, whether it’s a government directed, not-for-profit plan, or a full-blown public option. Any government alternative, say these people, will bring competition to current health care providers (which are already quasi-governmental companies) and force them to lower costs. So government can be considered a competitive entity! Of course, this has long been the prevailing opinion in the halls of Bureaucracy.
No private entity that must control costs and has a limit to the amount of revenues it can bring it can compete with a public system or a government subsidized system that has the power to tax (steal) almost unlimited funds to feed its appetite. That is why we know that any health care system that emerges from this regime will eliminate the availability of any private options whatsoever.
