It's Impossible to "Compete" with the Government

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Scott Harrington, professor of health care management and insurance and risk management at Wharton, explains why it's impossible to have private plans "compete" with a "public" (i.e. government) health care plan. Ultimately, he notes, the private plans will be winnowed out.

What's amazing to me is that the Obama administration is already proposing taxes, care reductions and all kinds of ways to finance what they estimate will be a $1.2 trillion commitment.

How, exactly, are we to know that these numbers will be accurate and that the costs won't be far higher? After all, Vice president Biden just admitted over the weekend that they "guessed wrong" in projecting the number of jobs their stimulus plan would supposedly create (and note that the "guess" worked to the advantage of the Obama administration, not the American people). And yet we're supposed to trust them to project proper costs for government health care?

Riiiiight.