>If you get the quality and availability of care as under the private insurance, it saves you money. However, if it does not, then keeping the private insurance will in the end cost you $17K/yr because paying for the government plan is not an option, only using it is.
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>Agreed. So if it is also agreed that reform is needed, the focus should be on savings or at least cost neutrality. Which means that hysterical claims about the sky falling even before the proposal is fully defined are unhelpful. People should be drawing a line in the sand and telling their representatives that they'll be out on their nellies if they can't show a move towards the sorts of efficiency seen in the best systems elsewhere in the First World. How they do it is up to them. If they want to emulate and improve on other successful systems, fine. If they want to experiment with a new concoction of their own, fine- but they better get it right. Demonizing one of the alternatives is a counter-intellectual behavior IMHO and makes it more difficult to hold politicians accountable if their options are being constrained by public hysteria.
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Questions and comments based on the plan proposed are not hysterical. The plan contains wording which makes it impossible to switch to private insurance down the road if you don't have it on the day the plan is implemented. That takes away choice and also threatens to put private insurance companies out of business. That is not a hysterical claim, it is in the plan. It is important that people notify their congressman that a plan containing those conditions is unacceptable before it is voted on and becomes law. It is better that they go back to the table and come up with a good reasonable plan and not just pass anything to get it out there fast.



>Actually, from what I have read, paying for the government plan is not an option. Using it is. Unless that changes, it is the worst possible result.
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>It's only the worst possible result if the service isn't good enough that you want to move. Somebody else posted an example in Hawaii where families flocked to move from the paid to the subsidized scheme. This shows it can be done, even though interest seemed to focus exclusively on the fact that providing care to 100 families costs more than providing it to 10 rather than the fact that providing it to 100 families yielded a total cost of just over half of what it used to cost for 85 families. ;-)