Per George Will:

Competition from the public option must be unfair because government does not need to make a profit and has enormous pricing and negotiating powers. Besides, unless the point of a government plan is to be cheaper, it is pointless: If the public option conforms to the imperatives that regulations and competition impose on private insurers, there is no reason for it.

We’ve been told for three decades by the disciples of Ronald Reagan that the private sector is inevitably more efficient than is the public sector. Now one of those disciples, George Will, is whimpering that subjectig that claim to the discipline of the marketplace would be unfair because the public sector doesn’t have to extract a profit.

The simple fact of the matter is that for-profit insurers have been an abject failure at serving the needs of the healthcare market. And the reason is simple: their objective is to maximize profit, which they do by denying coverage to those in most need of healthcare. Now the marketplace will tell us if other options are as superior in the United States, as they have proven to be in the rest of the world.

The precise need for a public option is laid out by Robert Reich in today’s Wall Street Journal:

[W]ithout a public option, the other parties that comprise America’s non-system of health care — private insurers, doctors, hospitals, drug companies, and medical suppliers — have little or no incentive to supply high-quality care at a lower cost than they do now.

Which is precisely why the public option has become such a lightening rod. The American Medical Association is dead-set against it, Big Pharma rejects it out of hand, and the biggest insurance companies won’t consider it. No other issue in the current health-care debate is as fiercely opposed by the medical establishment and their lobbies now swarming over Capitol Hill. Of course, they don’t want it. A public option would squeeze their profits and force them to undertake major reforms. That’s the whole point.