If government gets involved in health care with a public option, why should we expect different results than what taxpayers got with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?

The problems created by the the Fannie/Freddie business/government model is similar to what could happen if the government provides health care. Remember, Fannie/Freddie were private companies with a government backed mission.

"The government mission required them(Fannie/Freddie) to keep mortgage interest rates low and to increase their support for affordable housing."[15]

That is what the government wants to do with health care. Keep costs down and include everyone.

Here's what happened:

Government backing let Fannie and Freddie dominate the mortgage-underwriting. They returned some of the profits to the politicians, sometimes directly, as campaign funds, and sometimes as "contributions to favored constituents." [21]But there were two other parties--Congress and the taxpayers--that also had a stake in the choices that Fannie and Freddie made. Congress got some benefits in the form of political support from the GSEs' ability to hold down mortgage rates, but it garnered even more political benefits from GSE support for affordable housing."[15]

The conservatorship action has been described as "one of the most sweeping government interventions in private financial markets in decades,"[7]and one that "could turn into the biggest and costliest government bailout ever of private companies".[8]

*****************

A government run health care option is not the best idea. We will only really pay for it by increasing the deficit. Private insurers will start to fold but before that happens they will find a way to eliminate people who are considered to be poor health risks onto the government option making the government option costs dramatically increase. Government will soon have to bailout private health insurers just like they did Fannie/Freddie. I can not see how anyone can even argue that the government will not have an unfair competitive advantage over private insurers. Good business sense dictates profits not hand outs. The only way private insurers could survive would be that the government option was so bad that no one would want it unless they absolutely couldn't pay for it.

So what is the answer. The answer is for Congress to get the lobbyist out of their back pockets, and do the job they were elected to do. That being to legislate, regulate, and reform health care as it now exists.


Quotes taken from Wikipedia

On second thought, the government would probably run a public health care option so inefficiently and with so many on the take that private insurers might be able to compete....

Nope...

Government medical option will generate unstable market forces...

No one will have enough actual cash to pay insurance companies.

Cause most will either have NO job or be in a position where they are only allowed to work a few hours a week.

Got to stablize the ECONOMY before you can make medical an ecomomic focus.

its a shame you aint got wot we have here in the uk "NHS-national health service "because we all get it...i watched that film MICHAEL MOORE done called SICKO and saw how it was in the states and thought it was wrong if you aint got insurance you dont get help

Your economy wasn't tanking when you built the foundation for your.

There is a time to do all things.

Right now is the time for us to fix our economy NOT burden it.

Then can we build a suitable medical system.

Never build a house on sand (has this not been said in your household?).

i agree,its just a shame you aint got wot we have because i would hate 2 think how much it would off cost my brother"he broke his back on a fair ride,now in a wheelchair" 2 get well

Regardless of how you and Rush Limbaugh feel about the public option, 70% of Americans support a single payer system. Every 30 seconds there is a medical bankruptcy in the USA, and 60% of bankruptcy in the USA is the result of our broken health care system. We are 37th in the world for health care in spite of the fact that we spend more on health care then any other country in the world. If things continue as they are, the weight of the health care system will destroy our economy completely inside of the next 15 years. Are you aware that every year 18,000 people die in the USA because they cannot afford health care?
This pay or die system is not working. If you and Rush Limbaugh can ignore all these facts offering only tired arguments and scare tactics attempting to ignore the will of 70% of the American people, then you are all a bunch of frauds in support of a status quo that is literally killing us.

George Will June 2009 "This Week"

"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."

Claim: Many of the uninsured are not U.S. citizens.

Fact: About 9.7 million of the uninsured are immigrants, both legal and illegal. The National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation estimates that 5.6 million of these are undocumented, but there are no hard data on that – NIHCM stresses that "the CPS does not collect information on legal status among non-citizens." Immigrants, especially new immigrants, are more likely to be uninsured than citizens. They are also less likely than citizens to use expensive emergency care, according to research from the Kaiser Family Foundation.


http://www.factcheck.org/politics/the_real_uninsured.html

Claim: Many of the uninsured can afford private health care. About 9.1 million of the uninsured have household incomes greater than $75,000, and 10 percent (about 4.7 million) make more than 400 percent of the federal poverty threshold, according to KFF. In 2007, the most recent year of Census statistics, a family of four at 400 percent of the poverty level would have a household income of $84,812 or more.

Fact: So it's true that many of the uninsured could, in theory, spare the $3,354 average annual employee contribution for employer-sponsored family coverage, or even the $5,799 average premium for individually purchased family coverage. But it's also true that 66 percent of the uninsured make less than 200 percent of the poverty level according to KFF, which is less than $42,406 for a family of four in 2007. And a family's premium costs may actually be much higher than the average for individually purchased insurance, depending on the number of dependents, the ages of family members, their state of health and the state in which they live. For instance, the average annual premium for individually purchased family coverage in Massachusetts, according to America's Health Insurance Plans' Center for Policy and Research, was $16,897 in 2006-2007 (before the state changed its insurance plan), and in New York it was $12,254.

Furthermore, even those who can afford coverage cannot always get it. AHIP found that 72 percent of 2006 applications for health insurance were eventually approved, while the rest were withdrawn, not processed, or denied for medical or non-medical reasons. And of those who got coverage, 11 percent had to pay a higher rate than requested.

http://www.factcheck.org/politics/the_real_uninsured.html

The Census Bureau estimates that 45.7 million lacked health insurance at any given time in 2007. But fewer lacked coverage for the full year, and more did without for one or more months during the year. All three numbers are likely to be higher for 2008 due to massive job losses.


http://www.factcheck.org/politics/the_real_uninsured.html

George Will June 2009 "This Week"

"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.
***************
I learned a long time ago to put more reliability in ACTUAL NUMBERS because percentages can be very misleading.
***************
About 9.1 million of the uninsured have household incomes greater than $75,000, and 10 percent (about 4.7 million) make more than 400 percent of the federal poverty threshold, according to KFF.

Did you notice there are no numbers for the 200% category, only a percentage.

For example,
300 million Americans minus 45 million = 255 million or 15 %
Well, that's no more than what people tip at restaurants.

Congress should be legislating, regulating, and reforming health care as it now exist.

The Government already runs a Health Care Program. It's called Medicare.

If you really want to see some fur fly in Washington, just see what happens if someone mentions doing away with that program!

Doing away with medicare will only drive prices even higher.
With the majority of employer backed insurance (Mines this way, my dads was and everyone I have talked to) requires you to go on medicare when you reach social security age. Your private insuer becomes the secondary payer. Well that will put more costs on YOUR insurance company and guess what, more cost to you!!!!

That happened to my mom. She worked until she was 70. She had to accept Medicare at 65.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is retooling his pitch for legislation overhauling the nation's health care system by emphasizing that any bill he signs will include consumer protections as congressional Democrats struggle to show progress on his top domestic priority.

Among conditions that White House aides say Obama will outline later Wednesday: insurers would be required to set annual caps on how much they can charge for out-of-pocket expenses, fully cover routine tests to help prevent illness, and renew any policy as long as the policyholder pays their premium in full.

Insurers also would be barred from refusing coverage because of pre-existing conditions, scaling back insurance for people who fall very ill, charging more for services based on gender, and placing caps on coverage. And, they wouldn't be able to deny children family coverage through age 26.

Obama is seeking legislation to extend health insurance to millions who lack it, at the same time he has asked lawmakers to slow the growth in the skyrocketing cost of medical care overall. His latest appeal in visits to Virginia and North Carolina comes as lawmakers moved slowly toward fulfilling his goals.

In the House bill, the uninsured won't be covered until 2013 — after the next presidential election. In fact, it would take the better part of a decade — from 2010-2018 — to get all the components of the far-reaching proposal up and running.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090729/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_health_care_overhaul

"In the House bill, the uninsured won't be covered until 2013 — after the next presidential election. In fact, it would take the better part of a decade — from 2010-2018 — to get all the components of the far-reaching proposal up and running."

That's too far away, IMO.

agree, wondering what's the rush to get it passed if it won't help anyone for years???

A smaller version of what they are trying to do.
Mit Romney did this in Mass. And it's not working. Why would you think it will work on a larger scale?

Romney’s Folly
Health-care mandates are a middle-class tax.

By Michael F. Cannon


Amid negotiations with leading Democrats over health-care reform, Iowa senator Chuck Grassley, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, commented, “The federal government is in the process of nationalizing banks, nationalizing General Motors — I’m going to make sure we don’t nationalize health insurance, and the ‘public option’ is the first step to doing that.”

Grassley is correct, and conservatives are right to oppose Pres. Barack Obama’s proposal to create a “Fannie Med.” But when it comes to nationalizing health insurance, there is more than one way to skin the patient. Indeed, there is talk on Capitol Hill that Grassley and other Senate Republicans may be close to a deal that would nationalize health care smack dab in the middle of the private sector. For an example of how that can be done, look to Massachusetts.

In 2006, Gov. Mitt Romney teamed up with Beacon Hill Democrats and the Heritage Foundation to enact the most sweeping health-care reform in the nation. Governor Romney made Massachusetts the first state to require that its residents purchase health insurance under penalty of law (the “individual mandate”) and the second state (after Hawaii) to require that employers make a minimum level of health insurance part of employee compensation (the “employer mandate”). Romney created new government subsidies and expanded Medicaid to help residents comply with those mandates. He also created a health-insurance “exchange” — a government-managed marketplace — called the Commonwealth Connector.

Although Romneycare included no insurance program explicitly run by the government, it gave Beacon Hill politicians so much power over the health care of Massachusetts residents that it might as well have. The individual and employer mandates, operating entirely within the private sector, imposed what amount to new tax burdens, gave government the power to regulate all aspects of health insurance and medical practice, and subjected residents’ access to medical care to political calculation. Moreover, the fruits of Romneycare have been exactly what you’d expect from a government program. Before reform, Massachusetts’s health-care sector was rigid and expensive, with some of the longest waiting times in the nation. Since reform, it has grown even more rigid and expensive — though the politicians have managed to hide more than half of its $2 billion cost. Waits are longer as well, though they hardly merit a mention compared with the more odious forms of rationing involved.

All of this makes Massachusetts a case study in the reforms that President Obama and congressional Democrats are trying to ram through Congress. Both the House and Senate health-care plans include individual and employer mandates, new government subsidies, a broader Medicaid program, and a new government-managed health-insurance exchange — as might a deal betwen Grassley and Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D., Mont.). As goes Massachusetts, so would go the nation.

Like any government health-care program, Romneycare has spurred its share of garden-variety “send a check to Uncle Sam” tax increases. Yet those taxes don’t account for even half of Romneycare’s costs. Individual and employer mandates are the taxes that politicians prefer when they don’t want you to realize they’re taxing you. As President Obama’s National Economic Council chairman, Larry Summers, wrote in 1989, employer mandates “are like public programs financed by benefit taxes. . . . There is no sense in which benefits become ‘free’ just because the government mandates that employers offer them to workers.” The same is true of an individual mandate: To the extent that government forces people to purchase something they do not value, it is a tax, even if the money never enters the treasury.

That means that Romneycare achieves near-universal coverage mostly by taxing middle-class earners. Massachusetts forces employers to offer workers a minimum level of health benefits or pay an annual $295-per-worker penalty, while individuals who do not obtain coverage face annual penalties as high as $1,068. Since employers pay for employment taxes and employee benefits by reducing wages, Massachusetts residents can face a tax of nearly $1,400. Depending on their income, married couples pay up to twice that.

Obama is hardly oblivious to the coercive nature of mandates. Take him at his own word: During the presidential campaign, he attacked Hillary Clinton’s proposal for an individual mandate by likening it to Romney’s Massachusetts model. Under an individual mandate, Obama explained, “you can have a situation, which we are seeing right now in the state of Massachusetts, where people are being fined for not having purchased health care but choose to accept the fine because they still can’t afford it, even with the subsidies. And they are then worse off. They then have no health care and are paying a fine above and beyond that.”

Since individual and employer mandates are simply disguised taxes, imposing them would violate Obama’s pledge not to tax the middle class. During the presidential campaign, he vowed, “I can make a firm pledge: Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase.” Yet House Democrats would force non-compliant employers to pay a tax equal to 8 percent of payroll, while uninsured individuals would pay a tax equal to 2.5 percent of income.

An uninsured worker earning $50,000 per year with no offer of coverage from his employer would therefore face a 15.3 percent federal payroll tax, plus a 25 percent federal marginal income-tax rate, plus an 8 percent reduction in his wages, plus a 2.5 percent uninsured tax. In total, his effective marginal federal tax rate would reach 50.8 percent.

In late June, Obama declared, “If any bill arrives from Congress that is not controlling costs, that’s not a bill I can support. It’s going to have to control costs.” Last week, Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Elmendorf explained that simply forcing people to purchase health insurance would bend the “cost curve” — in the wrong direction. No one who has been paying attention to Massachusetts was surprised.

Prior to reform, Massachusetts already was known for extravagant health-care spending. In 2004, per capita spending was a quarter to a third higher than the national average and was growing faster to boot. According to a study funded by the BlueCross BlueShield Foundation of Massachusetts, Romneycare caused spending growth to accelerate further. The study indicates that without reform, spending would have grown by just 6.4 percent in 2007. Instead, it grew by 10.7 percent — two-thirds faster.

A report by the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation titled “Massachusetts Health Reform: The Myth of Uncontrolled Costs” tried to put a happy face on the reform’s expense. It explained that in 2009 Romneycare is covering 432,000 previously uninsured residents while increasing state outlays by just $409 million — which seems like a bargain. Of course, the full cost of Romneycare includes not only increased state spending but increased federal spending (in the form of matching Medicaid funds) and mandated private spending by individuals and employers. In total, the foundation conservatively estimates that the full cost will exceed $2.1 billion this year. That is, Romneycare is covering the uninsured at a cost of about $6,700 each. For comparison, in 2007 the average cost nationally of an individual policy was just $2,600. That’s a bad deal, even by government standards.

Note also that only about 40 percent of the cost of Romneycare actually appears in any government budget. The lion’s share is borne by the private sector. Massachusetts politicians are nonetheless struggling to scrape together the 20 percent they must raise themselves. Of necessity, they have begun rationing access to care.

For all that additional spending, many Massachusetts residents are finding it harder to see a doctor. One survey of wait times to see a specialist, such as a cardiologist or orthopedic surgeon, reads like a dispatch from Canada. In 2004, specialist wait times in Boston were already among the highest in the nation. Over the next five years, wait times fell in most U.S. cities to an average of 21 days, but in Boston they rose to an average of 50 days, even though Massachusetts has more doctors per resident than any other state. Those wait times may be exacerbated by state officials’ decision to impose price controls in Medicaid. When the Massachusetts legislature needed to trim $130 million from the cost of Romneycare, it canceled coverage for 30,000 legal immigrants — a stark reminder that governments ration care by targeting those who wield the least political power.

The individual and employer mandates, on the other hand, give Massachusetts the power to ration care in a deliberate and systemic fashion. When government mandates that individuals purchase health insurance, it must define “health insurance” so that people can know whether they are complying with the mandate. That not only gives government the power to dictate what types of coverage health plans must offer but also enables it to regulate the relationships between insurers and health-care providers. In July, a legislative commission recommended that Massachusetts use that power to impose price controls in the private sector as a means of rationing care.

At first, the proposed price-control regime would dictate the unit of payment that insurers and providers must use. Instead of paying providers a fee for each particular medical service — $50 for a flu shot, $300 for patching up a broken finger, whatever — Massachusetts would dictate that all insurers pay providers a “global payment” that covers all of the patient’s medical needs for an entire year. There’s nothing dangerous about this method of paying providers as long as insurers using other payment methods are free to compete. But if government mandates that “global payment” is the only legal payment method, you get Canada. In effect, “global payment” becomes the government’s way of delegating medical-rationing decisions to doctors and hospitals, which must accept a flat fee per customer and then decide what they will and will not do for the money they receive.

Of course, to have any real impact on spending, the state would have to control not only the method of payment but the prices themselves.

In 1989, Summers wrote, “Conservatives tend to prefer mandated benefits to public provision, as evidenced, for example . . . in proposals in the 1970s to mandate employer health insurance as the ‘conservative’ alternative to national health insurance.” The experience in Massachusetts should teach conservatives that individual and employer mandates are socialized medicine with a private façade. We’ll know by watching Senator Grassley whether conservatives have learned that lesson.

— Mr. Cannon is director of health-policy studies at the Cato Institute and co-author of Healthy Competition: What’s Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It.

No way am I going to read all that CRAP from the Cato Institute.

They are out of touch with reality and spread propaganda.