If a government [health insurance] program were to be stripped of any special advantages it would cease to be a government program. It would be just another private insurer. Take away the violence and intimidation, and Tony Soprano is just an eccentric and earthy businessman. – Michael Cannon, Cato Institute
Here’s his reasoning (emphasis added):
Consider what would be necessary to create and sustain a level playing field between government and private insurers.
First, a new government program would have to be completely self-financing. No special subsidies for start-up costs or operating costs, and it would have to maintain real reserves just like private insurers.
Second, Congress could not leverage its market power to favor a government program by adopting Medicare‘s payment rates or requiring providers to participate as a condition of Medicare participation.
Third, Congress and federal bureaucrats cannot be allowed to enact any regulations favoring the new program either deliberately or inadvertently. That means there cannot be even an implicit guarantee that the government would bail itself out.
Fourth, no future Congress and no future bureaucrats can be allowed to do any of these things, ever.
These conditions will never be satisfied because public-plan supporters do not want them to be. Indeed, they want to violate every single of them from the get-go. They want a new program to build on Medicare’s infrastructure, to use Medicare’s payment rates, and to receive special subsidies.
Read the whole piece here: A Level Playing Field? Don’t Make Me Laugh. For more details, see Michael Cannon‘s presentation from earlier this year (video, audio, and slides) here.
