Health Care Reform Debate - Single Payer Vs The Public Option

There are three options facing the United States in today's health care reform debate, what follows is a compare and contrast between those three options.

(1)No Real Change

The first option is to not make a significant change to the system. This is the choice of the insurance industry which is making billions of dollars of profits even during this economic recession. This is the choice being pushed by the Republicans and "Blue Dog"Democrats in the House & Senate since they are effectively bought off by the insurance industry. This is also the choice we can quickly dismiss because we cannot continue on the same road we are on now.

The system we have now is seriously broken. It costs more than any other system in the world and yet our actual health care is far worse than many other nations. The US health system is ranked #37 in the world by the World Health Organization and we rank #50 in life expectancy (yes that means the people in 49 countries live longer than we do on average.) We have about 50 million uninsured people. Furthermore this is more than just a health issue, it's also an economic issue. If our current system is left unchanged it will bankrupt our nation.

(2) The Public Option

The second option is "The Public Option."This is being pushed by President Obama and by most of the Democrats in the House &Senate. It allows for the creation of a "public health insurance plan" much like Medicare. This plan would allow people to either stick with their current health care insurance or to choose the government plan instead.

This would drive down costs because the government plan would be less expensive than the private insurance plans available now, and the new competition would force down prices at the private insurance companies. So even if you do not choose the public option yourself, it would positively effect you.

The Public Option is a compromise between the first position of no change and the 3rd position which is true universal health care known as "single payer."

(3) Single Payer

The "Single Payer" is the government. This means that everyones health care needs would be covered by a government health care plan. It would work somewhat like Medicare except instead of only certain people being eligible, every American would be.

This would greatly reduce costs and paperwork. It would cover every single American with no questions asked. It would most likely result in far better health coverage for Americans. Other countries have in place similar health care systems and they spend far less than we do on health care and get far better health care results and live longer than we do. Simply put this is the obvious choice that we should be making.

The problem is that it would effectively kill the health insurance industry and they are far too powerful in Washington to let that happen. That means while this is definitely the right choice for the American people, we are unlikely to see it actually happen because too many rich fat cats have corrupted our political system.

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