Your Comments - Single Payer v. The Public Option

In reviewing and posting your comments, I need to say that I'm agnostic in regard to single payer v. the public option. I want to present both of your views, and the upcoming seminar of physicians and economists will make arguments for both. I thought this email letter I received from a Ph.D./entrepreneur made a very strong case for the public option. But I will also post letters that argue as cogently for single payer. We're all on the side of health care reform here, and the better we stick together, the better chance we have at getting reform, however it's named.  

With that said, here is James' excellent comment:

“Eva-Lets not let the perfect be the enemy of good.  

France has a system where everyone gets a baseline insurance plan from the government and must purchase a private insurance policy to cover the rest. In France catastrophic illnesses that bankrupts people here in the US are all covered by the base plan, but to see a doctor promptly or to have non-essential medical services performed requires extra private insurance. The Administration's wish list is to move to a system that is similar to the Federal Employee plan and regulated in terms of services - a private insurance system with a public option competing with private companies. 

There are solutions that are a lot better than what is available now that are different from a single payer plan and that would be enormously better than our current system. Please don't respond to the extremism of the right with a rigid, unwilling to compromise demand from the middle. We have lost the ability to compromise in our nation; in the past this ability has occasionally arisen to move the nation out of a rut of policy and beliefs. Once we are on a different path further changes are possible, we need to compromise ourselves out of the rut. Demanding a public plan that would compete with private ones is a compromise.

An ideal single payer plan could be wonderful, but it is highly unlikely in this political climate. Getting the private sector to compete on quality of service instead of just price would be greatly aided by a public plan that would force the private plans to offer higher quality of services to compete with the government run plan. As the automobile industry has finally learned quality does matter every now and then even in our economic system. Lets work towards policies that force both price and quality competition in healthcare.

 Thanks for you efforts, my family greatly appreciates what you are trying to do.

Cheers,

James"