A fellow contributor to National Review?s health care blog, Ben Zycher of the Pacific Research Institute, has posted a lengthy rebuttal to President Obama?s many fishy claims in last night?s televised address. Stick with this blog post ? it?s a masterful performance, and definitely a keeper for your files. One of the best bits:
“. . . the public insurance option would have to be
self-sufficient and rely on the premiums it collects.” It will avoid
such overhead as “profits [and] excessive administrative costs and
executive salaries.” Sorry; that cannot work. Profits are the cost of
attracting capital inputs (just as salaries and wages are the cost of
attracting labor inputs). Without profits, the public option will have
to have its capital costs subsidized. As noted above, Medicare’s
administrative costs, computed properly, are at least double those of
private insurers. And do we really believe that government bureaucrats,
paid less than private executives, will manage large insurance
organizations as efficiently as the latter? Is there no self-selection
process in the market for executive talent? By the way, Mr. Obama’s use
of the example of public universities is laughable: They are subsidized
heavily.
