Competion With Insurance Industry

The public option will create competition has been said over and over again, and Kathleen Sebelius has now stated that there needs to be competition with the insurance industry. But shouldn't the competition be within the industry? And doesn't it already exist?

Blue Cross has to Compete with Aetna, Cigna, Humana, UHC, etc in order to get market share so we do have competition within the industry, but the government wants competition from outside the industry. Say what?

Aren't they saying that competition within any industry is not enough to tempter the greed of those big bad corporations so a government option is needed "to keep them honest". This is exactly what Obama has said, that a government option is needed to keep the insurance companies honest. So he is in effect stating that insurance companies are dishonest.

How about we apply that same logic to government monopolies on ..... let's say......taxes. How about we create some competition within taxation and the application thereof. Shouldn't we have somebody other than the IRS collecting the money, just to keep them honest you know. Or how about competition with Congress for spending it? Just some good old fashioned competition to keep them honest. The American people could then decide which policies to purchase, those of Congress or those of their competition.

If we need options from outside of a specified industry to keep them honest -- because all companies within an industry meet at a summit to figure out how they can gang up against the consumer and rob them blind don't you know -- then shouldn't that apply to government monopolies as well?

Slow Down and Step Back

Today Kathleen Sebelius, the new Secretary of Health and Human Services, told Congress that Health care reform must be done now, that it can't wait another year. Oh dear, yet another emergency situation in our government. But why can't it wait another year?

What about the situation is so unbelievably horrendous that we cannot take health care reform slowly and do it right? What is so much of an emergency that we have to hurry up to spend yet another several billion that we don't have? Where are we going to get the money? China isn't all that excited about lending us more money.

Why is Health care reform such an emergency? I don't understand. What is so different now that it was 15 years ago? What makes this yet another crisis in the Obama Administration?

Health care reform is going to be a major, major, major change to the country and it is not something that should be rushed. I'm not jazzed about having the government in control of the health care system anyway, and the idea of them rushing into it as the result of another imagined "crisis" scares the bejeezus out of me. I'd far rather see this taken too slowly but result in a great product than have it rushed out and the shiny new health care reform program suck. And let's face reality here, with the government in charge of it there is a 98% probability that the health care reform will suck to a level heretofore unknown to mankind.

This is just one more situation where the White House is stating that something is an emergency and must be done now. The trend we are seeing for this administration is to implement first and work out the kinks later. How much of our money have they wasted because they wanted to get it out there first and set guidelines for the expenditures later?

When it comes to health care reform, slow down, take some time, and if you're going to do it, at least do it right.