July 14, 2009

The Public Option Play: Insulting Our Intelligence

Having conquered banking and autos, the Sun King – Barack “I Won” Obama – and his congressional cohort may well have their hearts set on bringing health care under what some wags are calling their “reign of error.” After all, to the victors goes the spoiling.

But must they also, as Michael Corleone put it to Carlo Rizzi, “insult my intelligence” in the process?

The dumbest of the veritable cornucopia of dumb arguments being put forward by proponents of the Obama health-care plan involves the so-called “public option,” a Medicare-like government plan that would be offered in competition with private insurance.

The opponents of the public option state the obvious: You can’t fight City Hall, the House (not to mention the Senate) always wins, you don’t pick fights with people who buy ink by the barrel, and you can’t compete with a government entity.

In response, the fans of Obama’s l’etat grande solution – thinking either that they are cleverer by half than they are, or that everyone else is 50 percent stupider – attempt to turn conservatives’ faith in free markets back on them.

Take the president’s own mocking last month of the justifiable fears that have been expressed about a government health-care behemoth: "If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care, then why is it that the government, which they say can't run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That’s not logical."

The erstwhile law professor must have been home sick the day they taught logic. Because a government program doesn’t have to be well-run to crush any competitors in its path. It can sweep them aside the way the Sun King apparently plans to manage all aspects of American life – by edict.

It’s always helpful, when running an enterprise of any kind, to be able to regulate your competitors – based, among other things, on politically driven wish lists. “What? Your plan doesn’t cover breast augmentation for disadvantaged, clinically depressed unemployed ‘sex workers?’ Or sex-change operations for left-handed, learning-disabled teenage illegal immigrants? We’ll fix that!”

Even as you limit your own liability: “Grandma needs a pacemaker? Too old. Leave her by the side of the trail to die.”

It’s also fun and profitable not to have to worry about such old-fashioned concerns bedeviling private-sector businesses, like making money. Costs going up too fast for premiums to cover? No problem: We’ll just print some more currency, or shift the costs to those same private-sector competitors, just as Medicare does today.

Pricing? We don't need no stinkin’ pricing! Because the price of government health care is whatever the government says it is. Which, given the political pressures that will come to bear, will likely be lower than private plans. That is, until there are no more private plans.

It’s ironic, in fact, that just as the Sun King’s feudal lords are gearing up to become the world’s largest monopoly health care provider, they are also dusting off the torture rack in the Justice Department’s anti-trust department. The targets? Airline alliances and, reportedly, distribution deals between cell phone manufacturers and telecom providers, whom the feds charge with abuse of market power.

Talk about insulting my intelligence. Under these wireless marketing arrangements, the United States market is the most competitive anywhere in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), with consumers enjoying the lowest prices and using the most minutes. As the Wall Street Journal recently pointed out, iPhones have plummeted in price from around $500 to as little as $99. Meanwhile, the same Journal reported this week that with the economic downturn, it’s time to get ready for – and stop me if you’ve heard this one – yet another round of airline bankruptcies.

But then again, as his designs on the health care industry demonstrate, the Sun King knows all about abuse of power. As they say: Takes one to know one.