On health insurance companies being against a public option:
"If they tell us they're offering a good deal, then why is it that the government, which they say can't run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That's not logical."
The intellectual dishonesty is breathtaking, even by Obamanian standards. It's the old tried and true "straw man" argument, which our current President has become a master at employing.
For his argument to work, he'd have to compare apples to apples. He doesn't.
A private company charging customers directly for services is not in any way analogous to a government taxing a third party to pay for the services that another party receives. This fact alone obliterates Obama's meme. We move on to the "competition" aspect of Obama's straw man argument. To "compete" you must be in the same "arena" as your "competitor". Again, a private company is not in any way analogous to government services, so the two aren't in the same arena, and the two aren't competitors. In fact, the mere idea of the public option (which is a trojan horse for government run healthcare) is the antithesis of competition.
If people have the choice of having another person pay for their healthcare, they will always choose that over paying themselves. If you are standing in front of two restaurants, one where you have to pay and another where other people have to pay, which one do you choose? This also totally ignores the fact that you do pay for government run healthcare via your taxes. The only difference is that that government run healthcare leads to rationing and long waits for surgery, regular doctors appointments and x-rays. In general, it reduces healthcare quality in exchange for healthcare quantity.
In fact, Britain had to pass a law that emergency room patients had to be seen within 4 hours of being admitted to the hospital. Hospitals were forced to come up with a creative way to circumvent this four hour deadline. The UK Telegraph explains:
An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has found that thousands of 999 patients are being left to wait in ambulances in car parks and holding bays, or in hospital corridors – in some cases for more than five hours – before they can even join the queue for urgent treatment.
Experts warn that hospitals are deliberately delaying when they accept patients – or are diverting them to different sites – in order to meet Government targets to treat people within fours hours of admitting them.On two occasions in January, ambulances took more than five hours to unload patients at Queen's Hospital in Romford, Essex.
In the same month, journeys to Weston-super-Mare hospital in Somerset were repeatedly held up, with more than a dozen waits of two hours, including delays of four and five hours.
Dozens of A&E units refused all 999 arrivals for periods of several hours, on hundreds of occasions, forcing crews to take desperately sick patients on lengthy journeys, and shifting pressures to other hospitals, the documents show.
In the course of six months, hospitals in the West Midlands ordered a "divert" on more than 450 occasions, closing A&E units to all 999 arrivals for hours at a time.
During a six-week period last autumn, hospital chiefs in the north east of England closed casualty units to 999 arrivals on 34 occasions, for up to 19 hours at a time.
In summary, government run healthcare decreases the quality of healthcare. The "public option" is simply a trojan horse that will destroy the healthcare industry. Republicans need to hammer this issue home.