Wednesday, November 4, 2009

The zombie rides a unicorn into the mirage...

"The promise of the public plan is a mirage. Its political brilliance is to use free-market rhetoric (more "choice" and "competition") to expand government power."

from "Public Plan Mirage", The Washington Post, October 26, 2009



"A public plan is likely to damage competition. A government insurer has some big advantages over a private one; its financing costs would be lower because the government can borrow cheaply; it would not have to worry too much about future liabilities since it could never go bust; and its economies of scale would be larger than those of the competition. Those using the public plan would benefit in the short term, but the scheme might very well squeeze private insurers out of business, which would be bad news for the other half of Americans that have them—and, according to opinion polls, are generally happy about that."

from "Back from the Dead", The Economist, October 29, 2009

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Interesting look on how the world is handling this human right issue. Check out this Frontline piece. Sick Around the World.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/?utm_campaign=homepage&utm_medium=bigimage&utm_source=bigimage