Zack Cooper's Huffington Post article The Public Option Sideshow brilliantly elucidates the distractive problem of elevating the public option to mythic proportions within the healthcare reform debate.
Nobody in Congress wants to acknowledge the unbridled influence the insurance industry has over the legislative process, nor the complete mind-control that Big Insurance exercises over our elected representatives. The "watered-down" public option has become a brilliant smoke-screen behind which the insurance industry can hide from real reform.
As long as debate and public awareness focus on the public option, and other "toothless" components of the bill, the spotlight will be shifted away from real reform. Any bill that emerges will be a victory for the insurance industry, as long as nothing is done to repeal antitrust exemptions, ban pre-existing condition denials, and regulate insurance markets.
Even if a public option should create market competition, private insurance companies will surely find a way to squash it. Look at all the experience Blue Cross, Cigna, Aetna, and United Healthcare have had squashing competition and building near-monopolies. Without concurrent regulation, there's no way in the world any public option, no matter how strong, can prevail over the profit-bloated insurance industry. Granted, more people may gain coverage after a bill is passed, but it's going to be the private insurance behemoths that win, not the American people.
The public option is a great sideshow. And, sadly, it has distracted Americans from the real issues. In the end, passage of any reform bill will be a hollow victory. Until Congress acknowledges what's wrong with the current system and the need for insurance reform, how can things possibly improve?
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