Quote from MKTrader:
When you have (a) an infinite bankroll by doing more multi-generational theft and (b) the ability to regulate insurance companies out of business, there's no "competition." And you sound like you believe the spending projections and deficit-neutral garbage (i.e., accounting tricks). Look at all the other major government entitlement programs. The cost are growing exponentially and unfunded liabilities are staggering. They always cost MUCH more than projected.
Make no mistake, this will exceed its budget...and it will be abused. The looter, Obama-worshipping masses you see yelling "yes we can" in Detroit, New Orleans, etc. will milk it to no end.
You raise some points on which, in my opinion, there is widespread misunderstanding.
The two big entitlement programs are medicare and social security. It is quite true that medicare is a mess with out of control costs and lots of fraud. The cost problems are I think one of the aspects that the Obama administration was hoping to address through greater competition, negotiating with pharmacy companies, and clamping down on government sudsidies to providers of medicare advantage programs.
However the problem with social security is of an entirely different nature. The program was brilliantly conceived, as it turns out, and would if we don't delay too long, only require minor tweaking to make the actuary part sound far into the future. But there is, nevertheless, a serious problem with social security. The government owes the trust fund a staggering amount of money and very soon social security will need to start collecting on that debt. But, of course the treasury has no money to pay off the debt and so they will have to pay it off with more borrowed money. And worse yet, there will no longer be a surplus for the government to borrow. What is certain to happen, I believe, is that the government will be forced to monetize ever increasing portions of the debt, and consequently we should see the return of double digit inflation. That means of course that social security will be cheated right along with all the other creditors. (Because of the government's fiscal irresponsibility there will no doubt have to be significant increases in the social security levy as well -- this might ultimately be as extreme as removing the income cap altogether.)
Now returning to the medicare problem, it is my opinion that medicare is unsound because the US medical care delivery system operates as a government sanctioned cartel with tightly regulated access and no free competition. I don't like the idea of socialized medicine, but I do very much like the Obama approach which is basically a capitalist-free enterprise approach. The administrations plan, in contrast to the ridiculous way it has been characterized, is to introduce competition into the market place and take the first step toward breaking the cartel. More steps will be needed later of course. Passing the plan with the public option is absolutely critical to achieving the ultimate goal of bringing cost increases in line with those in the general economy.
It is a rather well conceived program in my opinion, but if it passes without the public option it will be a goldmine for insurance companies and costs will rise rather than stabilize. Passing the public option is absolutely essential to cost control. If Obama should get the bill without a robust public option, I hope he will veto it.