Debate on health care: Our view -- Dispute over ‘public option’ - Opinion - USATODAY.comOur view on health care: Dispute over ‘public option’ veers into fantasyland
Here’s a little secret: Government already pays more than insurers.
Depending on who you listen to, a central feature of President Obama's health care overhaul — a government-run insurance plan known as the "public option" — is either dead or on life support. That it is in trouble at all reflects the Alice-in-Wonderland nature of the medical discussion.
In health care politics, down is up, right is left and the sun rises each morning in the West. When lawmakers try to be frugal with taxpayers' money, their actions are labeled as Big Government intruding. When they try to bring some compassion to end-of-life issues, uncontroversial until it was included in a medical proposal, they're accused of promoting euthanasia. And when they ignore the unsustainable amounts of public money pouring into a broken system, they call themselves pro-market.
This last illusion was illustrated in 2003 when Congress, then under Republican control, passed a Medicare drug benefit estimated to cost about $500 billion over a decade.
Even though every dime was taxpayers' money, the government was barred from using its clout to negotiate the most advantageous deals with pharmaceutical companies. Borrowing trillions from future generations was OK. Trying to get taxpayers the most for their money was not. ...
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