Tea Party Protesters Are Right To Oppose Public Option Plan

Floor Speech

Tea Party Protesters Are Right To Oppose Public Option Plan

U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis welcomed Tea Party protesters at his Spartanburg and Greenville offices today, saying that they are right to oppose inclusion of a "public option" in a health care reform package.

Democrats in Congress and President Obama want to set up a Medicare-like, government-owned health insurer that would compete with private insurance companies. Democrats argue that a government-sponsored plan would be able to offer cheaper insurance because it wouldn't have a sales and marketing force that drives up costs for private insurance companies and it wouldn't have to return a profit to shareholders.

Conservatives argue that a public option would drive private insurance companies out of business, bankrupt hospitals and other medical providers with reimbursement rates as low as Medicare and ultimately create a single-payer government-run system of health care which would destroy choice of provider and quality. Meanwhile, the public-option-leading-to-single-payer system would do nothing to change the underlying problem with Medicare and Medicaid—increased costs that are projected to consume the entire federal budget within the next 20 years.

The Lewin Group, a health policy research firm, projects that inclusion of a public option would cause 119 million Americans to move to the Medicare-like public plan.

"A public option makes no sense," Inglis told the group. "It would dump 119 million Americans onto the already sinking SS Medicare. It would do nothing to control costs. It would bankrupt local hospitals and medical practices with Medicare-low reimbursement rates, and it would destroy the private insurance market. We want a robust private insurance market because we want to preserve choice of insurer in our system and choice of provider. We must insist on that freedom."

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