I went to a John Kerry discussion forum on healthcare last week. At the forum, it was interesting to speak to people who were strongly in favor and strongly against the public option. The people with the strongest opinions on both sides of the question appeared to lack experience and knowledge in the field and were generally speaking from emotions. The strong opinions went as follows.
Against the public plan:
I do not trust government. Any additional power given to government is just power to be abused. History has ample evidence to prove this. Those people in favor of the public plan are naive to think government bureaucrats will act in our best interest. I want none of that.
In favor of the public plan:
We need a public plan to control the commercial insurance companies. These companies (even the non-profit) are just watching their bottom line and seeing what they can get away with. The business people in charge do not care about the patients, and we already have plenty of examples of abuse. The last thing I want is some executive watching his bottom line to be deciding if I need care.
For the people I spoke to, it was interesting to see how their strong emotions were driven by a strong distrust, but for different entities. Hopefully, both sized sides will learn to imagine ways of adding checks and balances so that the viability of whatever system we get is not dependent only on the integrity of specific powerful individuals.
