During this whole health care debate, well-meaning liberals have insisted that a public option be part of any health care reform bill that gets voted on by congress. Yet it is the public option part of the bill that will likely be hardest to pass and is the most unpopular aspect of the bill among the American public. Some Democrats seem willing to risk losing the debate, and indeed passage of any health care reform bill in order to make sure a public option is part of the final deal. I find this very odd. After all, isn't the main objective of this bill to simply cover those who don't have insurance? Why should they care if private insurance companies cover them, or the federal government, especially if pushing the federal government-run public option might cost them passage of the bill? Why is the public option non-negotiable?
As I pointed out in Part I, the government has a pretty lousy track record of running public services, and furthermore, there is no need for the federal government to have their own plan in order to keep costs down, and to regulate what the insurance companies are providing for their clients. If there was, the government would be building our cars, and houses, and growing the food we eat. So again, why the insistence on the government-run public option?
This warped logic is reminiscent of another non-negotiable issue for many Liberals-school choice. Liberals have fought for years against giving lower-income parents the ability to send their kids to private schools. They argue that this would somehow harm the public school system, either by possible funding cuts to the public system, or unfair competition. This absolutely makes no sense to me. If you say you are for “the little guy”, if you say you are for helping those less fortunate, shouldn’t you want them to have access to the best schools and the best health care? If public schools are the best, then you shouldn’t worry that people will leave them in droves to go to a private school if they have that option. Public education’s success or failure should speak for itself. Obviously, no one can seriously argue that public schools do a better job of educating our nation’s children than private schools, just as no one can seriously believe that a government-run public option will do a better job running our health care than private insurance companies. It’s also important to point out that private schools do a better job of educating our nation’s children at a lower per capita cost than public schools. And yet, Liberals are fairly united in their belief that there should continue to be a class system when it comes to our schools and health care; a class system where the poor and middle-class are subjected to public schools, and public health care, while the very rich, like Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Streisand, congress, and President Obama, will continue to use private schools and private health insurance. For example, if President Obama truly believed that public schools are as good or better than private, don’t you think he would send his two daughters to one? Instead, he sends his daughters to the private Sidwell Friends School in D.C. that costs $29,000 a year. Shouldn’t he want all Americans to have access to such an exclusive education? Wouldn’t that do more to help level the playing field for inner-city kids, and disadvantaged minority children than any other government social program? The answer is “yes”, but that “yes” is apparently trumped by the desire to maintain a vital voting bloc of the Democratic Party, the poor. The party leadership is obviously smart enough to know it would be impossible to guarantee that that this bloc will remain poor and loyal Democrats if they are given the tools to simply become prosperous Americans.
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