On Sunday, George Will during the panel discussion on ABC's "This Week," exposed some inconvenient truths about this controverial subject that would likely change much of the public's view if they were regularly made aware of them.
After host George Stephanopoulos opened the roundtable segment, Will marvelously cut to the chase (video available here):
GEORGE WILL, ABC NEWS ANALYST: [T] this is now a single issue argument about whether or not we’re on a slippery slope to a single-payer system. That is, it’s about the so-called public option. And the president has said, “If you are starting from scratch” -- he said this very recently -- he would go to a single payer. That is, government as the single provider of health care.
Now, there are four arguments for the public option. One is, in the president’s words, it will keep them honest. To try to preserve the government as a lagoon of honesty, you can argue, refuted by anybody who reads any budget of any administration.
Bullseye, for all one need do is look at the totally absurd economic assumptions in Obama's 2010 budget, and one would have to agree with Will. But I digress:
WILL: Second, he says, it will play by the same rules as the private insurers, and therefore, won’t drive them out of business. If you play by the same rules, as you said to the secretary, what’s the point?
Exactly. If the rules of the private insurers are sound enough to be adopted by government, why change things?
WILL: Third, it’s necessary to give what Secretary Sebelius said a choice to the consumers. There are 1,300 entities offering healthcare plans in this country. Another one isn’t going to change that.
Precisely. Taking this a step further, many of these 1,300 entities will likely cease to exist if government gets involved. As such, Americans will have far fewer options.
WILL: Finally, there’s the argument that the American people are not smart enough to handle something as complicated as healthcare and have a competitive market. They’ve done rather well in computers.
Yes, but a common liberal meme is that people aren't smart enough to figure things out, and that's why government needs do it for them.
Fortunately, Will wasn't done, for he later dispelled another media myth about this issue:
WILL: Donna [Brazile], you talk about the 46, 47 million uninsured. Fourteen million of them are already eligible for other government programs and haven’t signed up. Ten million are in households with household incomes of $75,000 a year and could afford it if they wanted to.
Furthermore, an enormous number in that 47 million are not American citizens. Sixty percent of the uninsured in San Francisco are not citizens.
Bingo. So, this 47 million uninsured number the media always throw around is totally disingenuous and largely irrelevant. That said, it was awfully nice hearing somebody say it this morning.
