Insurance Lobby Loses Lone Argument

With Congress expected to address comprehensive health care reform this year, and with momentum squarely behind securing coverage for all through a public plan option that competes with private plans, the insurance lobby is sure to do everything it can to distort the public plan proposal and obstruct progress.

But a new poll conducted by Lake Research Partners on behalf of Health Care for America Now is likely causing panic in insurance CEO boardrooms.

Their go-to argument against any attempt to provide health care coverage for all is always to stoke fears of "big government." But the poll shows that those arguments fall flat:

...62% of voters believe a public health insurance plan will spend less on profits and administration and force private insurers to compete while only 28% of voters believe the attack that a public health insurance plan would be a “big, government bureaucracy.” 60% believe that if private insurers are really more efficient than government, then they won’t have any trouble competing with a public health insurance plan. Only 23% believe a public health insurance plan would have an unfair advantage over private plans.

The insurance lobby's twist on the "big government" argument has been, as reported earlier by the New York Times, that "the government plan would have unfair advantages, like the ability to impose lower fees, and could eventually attract so many customers that private insurers would be driven from the market."

But that claim is not flying. It's hard to argue that a public plan option should denied to the public because it will be too appealing to the public.

I'm quite confident the insurance lobby will come up with something to illegitimately malign the public plan option approach. They are a tenacious crew.

But if they don't have the "big government" scare tactic at their disposal, they don't have much else.

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future