Surfed across a news program talking about health care, and was immediately drawn in.
Some say that government is not taking over health care, and that the reform is meant to offer a government-run plan as an alternative alongside regular insurance, which would force health insurance companies to keep costs competitive.
But I have a question: what if the government-run health plan sucks?
We have a current model for looking at how the government handles running health care. Consider the VA health system. There are plenty of problems with the government-run system that provides health care to veterans of our armed forces. Anyone care to examine that angle?
But back to my question.
If the government-run option sucks, people would still have the option (theoretically) to pick a different plan and use private insurance. But if everyone knows that the government plan sucks, wouldn’t the price of the good plans go up?
I think of it like this. Dollar Tree (and other dollar stores, I’m assuming) carry a pregnancy test. So do Target and other big chain stores, but theirs cost more than $1, of course. Which would you choose? Which one would you want your doctor to use? What if you were about to start treatment that would harm your baby, if you were pregnant? Then which one would you want?
Will the government-run plan become the “dollar store” version of health care?
Just a thought.