A “public option” in health care?

Eric argues eloquently for why having simply a “public option” added to our private insurance tangle isn’t going to help us at all. An excerpt:

The value of single payer is much more than that it covers our citizens. The value is in the ways it simplifies practice for doctors and hospitals and for all of us. The way it could eliminate the maze of billing and contracts, eliminate the worries about degrees of coverage, eliminate the time wasted on making decisions every year about health plans and alternatives. We are all human beings, we are each given a body susceptible to similar disease and in need of similar care. Our nation, and if not our nation then our state, should take the opportunity to pool together the risks we all bear and provide for us one common solution that puts us all on equal health care footing.

Sure, there is room for private plans and a for-profit health care industry at the margins. Elective care and extraordinary care will always be attractive for those who can afford it. They will thrive even in the face of a single public health plan that covers the basics. But making a public plan just one option that “competes” against an industry as rich and misguided as our health insurance industry will, I fear, leave us spending way too much energy on the competition and realizing way to few of the potential benefits. We need to radically simplify this system to really gain the efficiencies that can transform the money we currently spend on the health industry into real health care.</blockquote>