Medical care is important. But of all our basic needs, even medical care comes in a notch below food. Most of us could survive longer without health care than without food.
So, why not create a government-run "public grocery store option" to compete with private grocery chains, just as President Barack Obama wants to create a "public option for health care" to compete with private insurers? President Obama says a public option would keep insurers more "honest," lest they make what he considers "too much" profit.
But if that's true for insurance, why not for groceries? If health care is a "right" to be guaranteed to tens of millions of Americans by a "public option," then shouldn't government set up grocery stores to compete with private grocers?
That was evidently the point that John Sorrow, Mid-South region president for Cigna Healthcare, made during a recent Times Free Press forum at Erlanger Hospital.
"Do we need a publicly run grocery store to keep Bi-Lo and Publix and Wal-Mart honest?" Mr. Sorrow asked. "I would contend that we don't need it in health care either."
He warned that a government-run plan that does not actually face the cost of patient care leaves everybody holding the bag.
"What you create is a death spiral of people that are going to fall out of the private plans and into the government plans, which is going to leave all of us in peril financially," Mr. Sorrow said.
In understandable concern about rising medical costs, Congress unfortunately is risking imposing far greater costs upon us all through ObamaCare.
I see this health care debate has hit a record low.
Wal-Mart and Bi-Lo are kept honest because of honest competition. When Cigna gets some honest competition with the reform bill, then we will start seeing prices put back in line the way Wal-Mart and Bi-Lo have.
How about a public option for life insurance, car insurance, and homeowners insurance? Maybe the feds could offer uninsured patients insurance that would reimburse doctors and hospitals for treating people with no health insurance. Obama hurts his cause with his hysterical rhetoric vilifying health care professionals and enterprise insurance companies. Can't we derive a set of reasonable goals about health care provision and health care insurance and then define a rational path to achieve those goals?
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