About six months ago I wrote a piece about how President Obama must walk a political tightrope in order to appease the moderates who helped him into office, while Nancy Pelosi was gearing up to treat Democratic control of the two branches of government as a liberal mandate to push through every Democratic pet project that was being held in reserve during the Bush administration.  Now, almost nine months into the Obama presidency, the Commander-in-Chief is still tiptoeing the divide between the political spectrum while Pelosi and other über-liberals have force-fed the American public more radical legislation than they can handle.  The President hurt his cause from the get-go with the stimulus.  Despite the dubious claim that the legislation has "saved" 1 million jobs, most of the public has seen little of its effects, and more and more reports of the funds going to pet projects that have little to do with spurring growth have only furthered public doubt about the program's efficacy.  Then there's the cap-and-trade bill which would essentially triple utility costs, and which the progenitor of the original idea of cap-and-trade has himself said is a bad idea in its current form.  Despite the bill's massive expense to the public, it will do little to curb greenhouse gas emissions worldwide because of increasing output from China and India.  One might even argue that it would increase emissions as companies pack up and leave the U.S. to continue operations in a country that has more lax environmental laws (just think about it, if you don't have to buy expensive carbon credits, it puts you at a huge competitive advantage).

Health care, particularly the public option, is simply another unpopular and expensive program that the American people (by a now 52% majority) do not want and yet find their elected leaders cramming down their throats.  What's worse is how those who disagree with the current reform proposals are portrayed by its proponents.  They've been called racists (because the real reason they oppose these ideas is because they can't stand the fact that the President is African-American), Nazis (I'm not sure why, maybe because the Nazis were the archenemies of the Communists), hate-mongers, wack-jobs, and everything in between.  Instead of opening a dialogue and asking themselves why people might disagree with them, congressional liberals have resorted to name-calling and a refusal to admit that people might actually disagree with them in principle, and not for some underhanded, more nefarious reasons.

Another problem that liberal proponents of the public option have failed to address is simply explaining why the idea will save people money.  The President for his part has argued that it will bring competition to the insurance market.  Well, the problem with that is that there are already thousands of insurers out there.  When I looked at insurers available through my job when I graduate, there were dozens to choose from, and each had multiple coverage options.  Competition could also be increased by simply allowing insurers to operate nationally, instead of restricting them to the confines of a single state.  Even if the government did increase completion, its ability to actually bring prices down through this is likely minimal.  As Liz points out in her article, the main reason why healthcare is so expensive is because of the costs and types of care, not insurance per se.  If health care reform reduced unnecessary care, moved people out of the emergency room and into cheaper facilities when practical, limited liability for suits, and streamlined the paperwork process, then medical care would be cheaper for everyone.  If medical care is cheaper, that means insurance companies don't have to pay out as much, which means the consumers wouldn't have to pay as much for the insurance in the first place.  Problem solved.  The public option wouldn't tackle any of these problems and would simply be another insurer facing all the same problems that current insurers face.

The other reason that so many people are adamantly opposed to the public option is that it will inevitably run this country further in to debt, or will take over the health care system, possibly both.  As cash for clunkers demonstrated, the government is very bad at guessing how many people will utilize a given program.  Right now all the budgeting being done for the public option has to rely on estimates of how many people would sign up for the plan.  When these guesses turn out to be wrong, then, just like the Post Office to which Obama compared the plan, the option will find itself awash in red ink.  So how does it deal with this budgetary conundrum? One would be to simply operate at a loss and run up a huge debt (bad idea).  Another possibility would be to raise all sorts of taxes to pay for it (bad idea).  Third would be to shortchange all the health care providers whom the plan services.  Whereas insurance companies usually bargain with providers for agreeable rates, the public option could operate under a "take it or leave it" attitude with how much it pays providers because of its size and because its rules would have force of law.  The result would be that health care providers would push the amount by which they were stiffed by the government onto those with private insurance.  Private insurance would become more expensive, and people would begin ditching the plans that they could no longer afford in order to sign up for the public option.  The mass exodus from private insurers wipes out most insurance companies, and voila, government takes over health care, with various nightmare scenarios ensuing (again, bad idea).

The fact of the matter is that most people are in favor of having some sort of health care reform, but the public option, if it does anything, merely addresses the symptoms of high insurance costs, instead of treating the cause, which is the high cost of the care itself.  Reform should be about doing what will actually work and what the American people actually want, not the pinnacle of American liberalism that is currently in the works that will balloon the federal deficit and exponentially increase the size and role of the federal government.