On 12 October 2009, Max Fisher wrote in The Atlantic A Free-Market Case for the Public Option.
A public option would, crazy as it might sound, make health insurance a free market. If there exists a government-run plan, which by all accounts would be basic and geared towards affordability, consumers will have the ability to opt out of the private insurance market. Private providers would finally have real incentives to provide a better product and innovate by building an insurance plan stronger than public insurance.
I wonder if the Government option will be used by the insurance companies to cast off unwanted customers. For people they don’t want to insure, they will make it so unattractive that these people will be forced to choose the government option.
If this were true, you’d think the insurance companies would want a government option. Maybe the study they just published was a bit of reverse psychology to push us into the government option.
Whatever the motives of the insurance companies, I hope for a public option with enough protections to prevent the insurance companies from gaming the system.