Barack Obama wants to provide a government-run health care option, modeled after Medicare, as a choice for people who don’t get medical insurance through their employers. This public health care plan would compete with commercial medical insurers to provide better service and benefits.
Obama’s health care plan is a gripping idea because it will test the notion that private health insurance plans operate more efficiently than government medical insurance plans. Many critics believe the public health care plan will end up putting private medical insurers at a big disadvantage because unlike the government, they have to earn a profit. Also, it could lead to an unraveling of employer-provided plans.
The interesting part of that argument is many conservatives are trying to do just that, end the tax deduction employer-based plans currently enjoy. Critics think the government health care plan would be so strong that it would lead to a single-payer health care system like the one found in Canada. Basically critics believe that private health insurance plans are so dysfunctional, they can’t compete with the United States government. This has resulted in medical costs rising faster than inflation and the government at all levels is picking up more of the nation’s health care bill. Government already accounts for 46 percent of all U.S. health care spending.
