When concidering the health care "public option" I think of the mandated auto insurance. In my state you are required to have liability coverage for your car, and you can either purchase it from a auto insurance company, or you can pay into a state fund that does the same thing. Nobody pays into the state fund because they can usually get a better deal with the auto insurance companies. So a public option would not nessesarily kill the insurance industries, but they are also talking about making the premiums for the public option on a sliding scale. If you make less then you have to pay less. If you make more you pay more. This has me concerned because in effect you will direct poorer people into the public option, and the rich will get the "good" health care becuase the rich can get a better deal with private insurers than the government because of the sliding scale. If the public option doesn't deliver on good health care then the poor get shafted again in favor of the rich, and if it does then everyone gets a fair shake. Either way the sliding scale makes it unlikely that the insurance companies will go out of business because poor people are the ones with out insurance now anyway. I would also feel uncomfortable having uncle sam force me to buy a product from a private company without any government option anyway. The premiums for a public option would be basically a tax which I am ok with, but something doesn't sit well with me when I am forced by law to fatten the pockets of a private business.
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