Socialism Marches On

Today, President Obama addressed the objection that private insurance could not compete against a government owned "insurance" enterprise. He stated, among other things, that UPS and Fed Ex currently compete against the Post Office, so why couldn't insurance companies also compete against a government enterprise? He did mention that the post office has chronic financial troubles (and thus is tax payer supported). I doubt that they even count the cost of the postal workers pensions. There are probably many other "costs" that are paid by the tax payer and are not figured in the profit-lost calculations for the post office. In fact, there are probably costs that cannot be calculated because they are for good and services from other government agencies that are not on the market, and thus have no price. The government monopoly post office also does not allow competition in the area of first class mail delivery and probably in other areas.

Whether or not government health care insurance would loss money (and I am sure it would - lots of money), it would always be competing on its own terms. Any services that it wished to monopolize, it would. Any regulations that it wished to impose on the so-called free market insurers, it would.

It seems obvious to me that government could could not compete with business. That is why it would impose regulation upon commercial insurers. They have already listed several new mandates it would impose (on top of the ones it has imposed over the last few decades). Business would not be allowed to operate in the ways it deemed most efficient and profitable. The flip side is that consumers would not be able to chose the type of insurance or coverage plans that they want. Government would surely want to unionize every aspect of health care, otherwise the government labor costs would be much higher than the private, given all of government employee union benefits. Either taxes would have to cover government losses or private premiums would have to be forced as high as government costs. These items would actually be beyond our power to calculate. Government would effectively set the price of insurance. They would soon find that they had to set the price of health care itself in order for their "insurance" to work. That, in turn, would not work either.

The whole idea of parallel systems sounds like a huge debacle doomed to failure. I for one would not want to pay taxes to the government system and also pay for private coverage. The forced failure of private insurance would be in furtherance of their ultimate plan. Talk radio has been playing clips of BHO and other Party dignitaries making campaign speeches at Party gatherings. They state quite clearly that a single payer government plan is what they want. BHO says we may not get it right away. We may have to offer a private option for a while. Presumably, this would be crippled by "regulation" then phased out and the government plan would take over the whole thing. This is exactly the socialists dream and method in all areas of human society and always has been. It has already happened to GM and Chrysler and to the biggest mortgage companies and banks. I do not see how anyone can really be deceived by this unless they want to be.