In the health care debate, liberals are fond of citing polls that show, they say, that people like individual aspects of Obamacare, but do not like the package as a whole. They conclude that voters are behaving irrationally, because if all the parts are good than obviously the whole must be good. From this line of reasoning, they deduce that if Congress passes Obamacare, then people will realize they really liked it all along. Alas, the logical premise is false. There are valid reasons why one might like the parts, but not like the whole.

Advocates of increased government involvement in health care frequently cite the profits of private health care providers as a major part of the costs of health care. The numbers, however, show that health insurance and managed care industry profits are 0.36% of the national bill for health care. If the compensation of industry executives is added as part of the alleged problem, then the industry accounts for 0.37% of total costs. The notion that industry profits are responsible for rising health care costs is a fraud.

I think it is possible for government to compete fairly with private enterprise, although I cannot think of an instance where it has happened. When the question is posed, what first comes to mind are subsidies by taxpayers to the government operation. That’s true, but there are also issues of access to and the cost of capital, costs of building market share, equatable rules of competition, and the risk of failure. All of these factors must be taken into account when considering if there is level playing field. I’m here to help.