Runs with Bison
Member
What you forgotto mention is that the 'government option' would be supported by taxes from other sources. Of course private enterprise can't compete, but the overall cost per person would be much more costly. Please let me know what the government does well (other than collect taxes and waste money)
Actually it would be much cheaper. It would cut out a tremendous amount of administrative cost and profit taking. It would also provide pricing power to the consumer. Essentially unregulated for profit monopolies and/or things like healthcare/pharma where the consumer has no pricing power only result in ever escalating costs...without a corresponding improvement in quality or breadth of coverage. The U.S. system comes in at the bottom of the developed world by such metrics.
As far as what the govt. does better, just about everything that it is suited to doing--e.g. things that private enterprise can't or won't do for all for a reasonable price. The difference is govt. has to provide services for all, vs. cherry picking of the profit motivated enterprises.
But let's turn the question around: how about you defend the lost decade of business in America and explain how they did so much better than govt? Pro-business govt. policies, secrecy (as in not accurately revealing financial status to shareholders), lack of regulation, and easing of regulations have resulted in a decade of NEGATIVE growth. These same pro-business policies turned govt. surpluses into MASSIVE deficits, wiped out our manufacturing base, and took investors to the cleaners.
Supply siding tax policy didn't reduce deficits or sustainably stimulate the economy, it created tremendously destructive financial bubbles. In economic terms it has resulted in tens of trillions of misallocation of capital. And much of that wasted capital wasn't just lost, it has pushed us in the exact wrong direction: toward reduced energy efficiency, reduced healthcare efficiency, and sending our industries chasing dead end roads rather than anticipating future needs. If one were trying to wreck the U.S. economy, one need only follow the Bush/GOP gameplan.