I've fixed it, but what I meant was:

“If the costs of the public option are only 10% of the projections, entirely possible given the Congressional penchant for not understanding the number system and grossly overestimating costs”

Thanks for pointing this out… pretty embarrassing mistake!

–Kyle

But the reality is that in modern America, it's easier to spend a bunch of money to create an option that might not be the best but will force them to change, rather than passing legislation to require them to change.

I don't like the idea of spending a bunch of money on a system that might not work, just like I think we should have let the auto industry fail. But at this point, we don't have much of a choice thanks to lobby groups and pocket-lining Congressmen.

Also, I'm not so much arguing the details of the healthcare reform in this as to how it can be financed, sort of as a method of deflating the ranting and raving of many Republicans at the moment.

But waiting for something to change isn't an option, and neither is hoping that Congress will one day wake up and decide that taking money, gifts, and whatever else from special interest groups is actually a conflict of interest and will start to pass legislation that is effective and proper.

*That's* why I support a public option, but only as *part* of healthcare reform – a single brick doesn't repair a wall.

See: http://www.kyle-brady.com/2009/07/16/american-l... and http://www.kyle-brady.com/2009/07/20/proposing-...

–Kyle

p.s. I'm going to get to your econ comments tomorrow… I ran out of time today.

The Fraser institute is a non-profit in Canada that does a lot of really great research on Canadian Health Care. One of their specific areas of research is the implicit costs of their health care system. A great deal of time is spent by Canadians waiting for care, this is because there are not enough doctors and there are too many people who want to see doctors (some call this rationing). Time spent waiting for care is unproductive time. It's time where a person isn't working and generating wealth. It's also time spent suffering. My point is this: Even if the public option cost only $1T, that's only accounting cost. There are other costs that have to be kept in mind.

Mind you, that only really applies to single-payer systems like Canada, the NHS (the public option in the UK), VA, Medicare and Medicaid, and many other government programs that offer “free healthcare”. “If you think health care is expensive now, wait till it's free!” (That was P. J. O'Rourke).

That money is wasted elsewhere is bad. It's downright contemptible. However, that pork exists is an important problem that should be kept in mind. Is pork only passed by bad people? Maybe, but it's passed by nearly all congress people. Either there's a problem in Congress that makes good people spend bad money, or a problem that makes it nearly impossible to hire good people. Either case is bad and should be addressed before haphazardly putting another Trillion in these people's hands!

In the mean time, we should look at addressing existing problems in health care finance (because the real problem is not in health care, it's in health care finance). Policies like those in New Jersey, where insurance companies cannot ask health questions, only hurt everyone (even though they were passed with good intentions; we all know what road was paved with those). If you can't ask health questions, people can go to the insurance company when they have problems and have their problems paid for by someone else (I recommend that all readers go to wikipedia and read the article on 'principles of insurance'); this creates an adverse selection problem. Nobody has incentive to buy insurance unless they're already sick. This drives up premium creating even less incentive for people to insure and more incentive for people to pass the buck. As a result, there are a lot of healthy people in New Jersey without insurance. This makes a great deal of sense for them, but it makes things look pretty grim to the rest of the country.