IN THE HEALTH CARE DEBATE, as elsewhere, the right likes to have it both ways.
Once you get past the conspiracy theories and outright lies—death panels, a government bureaucracy telling your doctor what to do, a plot to keep Republicans from getting medicine—the bottom line for the right is fairly simple.
They have two main arguments:
- A public option would be so good that it would run the private options out of business.
- A public option would be so bad that it would ruin health care for Americans.
At first glance they seem to contradict each other, but there is just one way they can both be true:
Both could be true if
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the public option were so bad that it would ruin health care altogether, but
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our current, private system were so much worse that it couldn't even compete with an unbelievably awful public option.
Unfortunately for the right, in that case the public option would still be the better choice.
But Republicans aren't really claiming both arguments are true.
They're just presenting two contradictory arguments in order to confuse the issue. They don't care which one we believe, just so long as we're convinced.
So lets look at both arguments, one at a time, and see how they hold up:
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A public option would be so good that it would run the private options out of business.
First, would that be such a bad thing—if it were true? If the government actually could do this job so much better than the private sector, why wouldn't we opt for that?
The current rhetoric is that it would be "unfair competition" to the private health industry. In other words, the health and welfare of the American people is not as important as corporate profits.
It's important to remember that this is about human beings and their health. If the government really provided a plan that was so much better that Americans chose it over private plans, then the private sector would deserve to lose out.
But would that happen?
Of course not, anymore than the post office has run UPS or Federal Express out of business, anymore than the Public Broadcasting System has ruined private broadcasting, anymore than public education has marked the end of private schools.
It's perfectly possible for a public option to operate side by side with a capitalistic system.
Conservatives who don't believe this must have a very low opinion of free enterprise. -
A public option would be so bad that it would ruin health care for Americans.
Once again, the first point to make is that the argument doesn't work even if it's true.
If the public option were really that bad, who would opt into it? If it were really that bad, wouldn't the private options end up driving it out of business?
But that won't happen either.
The post office has not run UPS or Federal Express out of business, but it does a very decent job, which complements the services of those private companies. Try sending a letter to your daughter on the other side of the country through UPS, and see how much you pay.
The Public Broadcasting System has provided hours of educational programming which the private sector can't find a profit in, without threatening the existence of NBC, ABC, or CBS—or even talk radio.
Public education hasn't run private schools out of business, but it has seen to it that untold numbers of students, who would never be able to afford private schools, have access to education.
We Americans like to complain about how badly government runs things, but the truth is that government programs are usually run just about as well, on average, as private ones.
We just have much higher standards for government programs.
If Lockheed decides to use a special screwdriver that costs $5,000, who cares? No one. But we do care when it's our government, and that's a good thing.
We just shouldn't let that fool us into thinking that the private sector is always a model of efficiency. -
The reality is that a public option would be just that—a public option.
It would provide an extra choice for Americans, and would, like the public schools or the post office, make health care possible for some who don't fit in the private system.
It would probably be better at some things than the private sector, and worse at others.
And, like the post office, it would keep the private players honest.
Can you imagine what it would cost to send a package across the country if the private companies were the only game in town?
The conservative media, and the Republican party, don't want you to think this clearly about their two-pronged argument.
They want you to worry that the public option will be so good that it will drive out all competition, and that it will simultaneously be so bad that you will hate having it.
The truth is that neither of those things would be so bad, that they can't happen at the same time, and that neither one is going to happen in the real world, anyway.
At least, that's what I think today.
