Federal Gov't Not Equipped to Run Health Care

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If you’ve been following the health care reform debate, you know that a key area of contention is whether private insurance companies should compete with a public plan run by the government.
 
Critics of the public option point out that there is no way to create a level playing field when the rulemaking entity (the federal government) is also a competing entity. Stuart Butler of Heritage has made the comparison to a baseball game in which the umpires double as employees of one of the teams:
 
“Imagine the Washington Nationals made it to the World Series (I know! But just imagine it.) and were facing off against the New York Yankees. And imagine that in this series, the umpires were hired and paid by George Steinbrenner. Somehow I don't think anyone other than a few die-hard Yankees fans could claim with a straight face that we'd have a fair series on a level playing field."
 
In addition to the issue of fairness, there is also a question of whether government could effectively oversee the health care it would offer. This is important considering that Medicare and Medicaid currently lose $60 billion a year to fraud and abuse.
 
Given that those two programs cover 43 million people, that’s about $1,395 in annual waste per enrollee. (By the way, it’s worth pointing out that when people talk about the low administrative costs of Medicare and Medicaid, they almost always leave out fraud and abuse.)
 
If we extend a public option to all Americans, who do you think will pay for the government’s inability to oversee its own plan? Will public plan enrollees get a $1,400 bill at the end of each year?
 
Health care reform is necessary, but a public option is not the way to go. Whether it’s missing money in Iraq, high-profile cases of income tax noncompliance, or trouble tracking the stimulus spending, the federal government has time and again demonstrated an inability to provide effective oversight of its own operations no matter which party is in power.