On Tuesday, 44 House Democrats joined Rep Jan Schakowsky in her bid to submit H.R. 261, legislation supporting a “public option.” When ObamaCare was passed in 2010, the “public option” was removed, but like the seven-headed Hydra, another head has grown in its place.
Schakowsky claimed, “Obamacare is already helping millions of Americans get the health care they need, but it can be made even better. The Public Option Deficit Reduction Act will give health care consumers more choice and lower their premiums.”
The legislation she proposed would give premiums 5 to 7% lower than private insurance. She didn’t mince words in her war on insurance companies; she said her plan would “put pressure on all insurers to lower their premiums in order to compete.” She claims that her bill would cut the budget deficit by $104 billion by the end of ten years.
But as Peter Suderman writes at Reason.com:
… the public option was conceived as a starter measure intended to pave the way for further liberal reform: Jacob Hacker, who popularized the idea of a public option, has been quite clear that the goal was to set up a government-run public option that would slowly grow into a single payer system — which would make it less a public option than a government-run monopoly.
A government-run monopoly? Sounds like Barack Obama through and through.
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