The debate over health care in this country...

...is going to be long and involved. And I expect to have a lot to say about it. Just this morning I read an article which stated that:

Senate Republicans have already voiced their opposition to giving all Americans access to government-run health insurance.

“Forcing free market plans to compete with these government-run programs would create an unlevel playing field and inevitably doom true competition,” several senior Senate Republicans wrote in a letter to Obama dated March 4.

“Ultimately, we would be left with a single government-run program controlling all of the market. This would take health care decisions out of the hands of doctors and patients and place them in the hands of another Washington bureaucracy.”

Is this true? Are health care decisions currently in the hands of doctors and patients? Not in the world where I live. Those decisions are in the hands of private insurance companies. They are the ones who decide who gets coverage, at what price, what procedures patients will have, which doctors they can see and how much those doctors will be paid. Now I know we've all been taught since Reagan to believe that the government is always less efficient than the private sector (it's almost become axiomatic), but after having dealt with private insurers over the years, I can't believe a Washington bureaucracy could be much worse. Maybe the health insurers should be run more like utilities. Without the incentive to maximize profits, maybe the doctors and patients would get a better shake.