IMHO it is crucial to break down the FUD into individual assertions so they can be examined.

Lets start with quality. The Hawaii experience was that "quality" was sufficient in a publicly funded scheme that people who can afford insurance are more than happy to go for the public option.

It was suggested that this represents lack of choice. The Hawaii experience is that once given the choice, people flock to the public scheme. Ironically some people who say they want freedom of choice are the ones wanting to deny this particular choice.

How about cost? The cost was less than half the cost of equivalent cover in the current system. By the time of the canning, 85% of kids in the public scheme were from families that used to pay $55/month for the same care. The cost to government for providing it was about $27 per child- less than half what parents had to pay in the current system.

It cost *government* more than expected not because the care was expensive but because most families opted in, not just poor families. That's a funding and social issue, not a cost issue, and not a surprise: expert evidence is that funded options will crowd out paid options 60% of the time just as occurred with policing and fire. Whether that's fair depends on whether people think the current system does a good job delivering care for kids and/or whether a socialized scheme might be better for society. Even if people refuse to contemplate this, offering affluent families $27 tax rather than a $55 premium still seem a no-brainer.

BTW, did you know that families with <$72K income are entitled to Medicaid in Hawaii anyway, meaning they already had free care? Yet they and the more affluent families all flocked to this program. Why?

>>The argument is not that people will want to join the free program, but that they will be coerced due to business' dropping their coverage en mass as a cost benefit. That is what happened in Hawaii.

That is not what happened in Hawaii. Where is the evidence of protest or dismay at being coerced or forced to join in? They *wanted* to join in! The only dismay was when the scheme was scrapped.

Seems to me that people with access to a public scheme generally are quite happy with it- as was shown in Hawaii. When you pluck apart the arguments of those who want to prevent this choice, words like "quality" and "cost" and "coerce" and "choice" seem to take on strange new meanings.