Healthcare Reform Myth # 4 – A public payer option will put private insurers out of business:

Yeah right, just like the US Postal Service ran UPS and Fed Ex out of business or public schools are running private schools out of business. I don’t necessarily favor a public option however don’t insult us by serving up the simplistic drivel coming out of the insurance lobby as an economic fact. This is the same lobby who spend $1.5 million each and every day lobyying congress. What a complete crock.

Is anybody out there (other than perhaps the congressional lapdogs of the insurance lobby on both sides of the aisle) not clear that the third party payer model is fundamentally flawed and that these guys are NOT your friends? The health insurance companies are in business to make money and with a business model that has an in built incentive not to pay claims you simply cannot hope the insurers have an inherently altruistic nature and will always act in the best interests of their insureds. They won't. The health insurers aren't inherently "evil" - they're just acting in complete accordance with their current economic incentives.

Until the link between the consumption of healthcare and the payment for healthcare at the point of service is restored we will not have a functioning market for healthcare in this country. Until the financial link between the decision to pay a claim and the payer of the claim is severed we will always have problems with the third party payer model.

By the way, the only people that are actually "happy" with their current health insurance are those that have no earthly idea what it really costs them. As they say - ignorance is bliss....