What's With the Liberal Obsession With the Public Plan?

Notorious lefty and dubious Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman miscalculated the devotion to single payer health care when he decided to take an informal poll to see how much Canadians in an audience adored their health care system. The results weren't surprising, well at least not to anyone but Krugman:




NewsBusters has the full scoop on Krugman's obsession with government run health care and it's certainly an interesting read. Were Krugman alone in this obsession, I think it would be easy to chalk this up to the ravings of an ivory tower intellect. But Krugman is far from alone. On any given day a health care item posted at Huffington Post can gather a couple thousand comments ranting on the wonders of single payer and government run health care. The same outdated polls and statistically biased studies showing US Health Care ranked 37th in the world are regurgitated ad nauseum if they were some long lost gospel truth the rest of the pagan world refuses to acknowledge. The same is true at the Daily KOS. Scott Limeux argues the entire reform all acknowledge is needed, should be scrapped without the government option included.

I recently was involved in a discussion with a few liberal friends that was almost mind boggling in the level of devotion to a government run plan. No one seems to be able to make the case why this would be better or why this is the only path to health care nirvana. Stuart M. Butler, Ph.D. writes on this obsession in a piece for the Heritage Foundation and notes that none of the 10 million federal employees are clamoring for this plan and we know that Congress has exempted itself from the same wondrous plan. Butler makes the point the underlying intention can not be that the left truly believes such a plan to be the "lean mean competing machine," the proponents claim it to be. Nor can it be the only means to cover those who don't presently qualify for Medicare but have trouble finding adequate coverage in an affordable plan.

Why would a government run Fannie or Freddie Med be any more likely to be successful than the governments ill fated attempt to compete and level the playing field in the mortgage industry? The answer really lies in the belief you will see over and over in comments on forums and in the disingenuous moralistic questioning in the advertisements, "why shouldn't everyone in America receive equal medical care? It is not about getting everyone without care adequate coverage, it is a populist rage against the "Cadillac" coverage some get while others get Medicare. Rather than pull everyone up to the best care possible, liberals would prefer to bring everyone down to equal care no matter how inadequate that might be. I for one believe we should care for the sick, it's the right thing to do. That doesn't mean we have to destroy the most advanced health care system in the world in the process.