Oh, I get it.

Naive, dedicated capitalist that I am, until too recently, I did not realize that “single payer” advocates did not even consider putting centralized administrative responsibilities out for bid regularly to keep those costs low.  Lo and behold, consider that they also wanted the government, via politically appointed legal government appointed committees empowered to decide what a Doctors is allowed to treat a patient with. The argument goes, if the blue pill is better than the yellow pill, then that is the pill we should give them. Those dumbies do not know what every 7th grader knows, blue food coloring costs more than yellow.

Important improvements over out status quo include ceasing to paying Doctors more for more medicine or more expensive, rather doing the hard and continuous work of finding ways to pay them for good outcomes.

There is an important role for government and competition is not one of them. An appropriate role is providing the leadership and non rushed debate on how best to pursue practical, effective methods to structure a system to let customer patients have a role in deciding what coverage and price point is “best” for them, listening if they want to their wise old relatives but not required to adhere to the dictates of a wise old nanny.

Notice how government competition worked out with the quasi governmental companies of Fannie Mae and Freddie Did. GSEs, both. Few understand the dynamics in the marketplace because those GSEs benefited from lower borrowing costs as well as their strong Democratic political bonafides and other similar connections for many decades. The result was they took major market share of  legitimate business from Savings and Loans, once the major provider of local home loans (remember that government created disaster?) and from all banks who also provided home financing, but none of which could compete with the government legitimately. All of them were turned into mortgage bankers selling loans to the GSEs, so they worked cleverly and hard at finding a competitive angle.

Necessity (due to unfair government competition) was the mother of invention and Banks and Wall Street indeed did “invent” products to compete with Fannie Mae and the Freddie Kid, until all of them went out of business recently due to too much success.

This sent them (banks, wall street and the GSE fiddlers) urgently into the loving arms of Chinese recirculated WalMart cash, via the US Government as the money changer in the middle, but alas, not smart enough to take a little vigorish here and there, rather sending out more than it takes in. This is the product of politics and business in the wrong alignment.

The Wall Street/Bank bailout has cost the taxpayer less than the GSE bailouts which have a somewhat permanent aspect for several reasons. Notice Wall Street is already figuring out how to pay back some TARP money to the government, which the government is reluctant to accept?

Heard anything about Fannie Mae and Freddit Wil doing the same? No because the F/F Duo are likely to remain on life support until Wall Street in a few years figures out how to sell them in the next optimism wave, but at a loss to the government.

GSEs (Did I mention that means Government Sponsored Enterprises?)…gagging on acronyms already? In case you have not had enough, then go ahead, get government more directly involved as a competitor in what should really in this reform oportunity to become for the first time, a private enterprise.

Any Public Option (an embarrassingly pubic Trojan horse, denied in public by the deniers, but truly intended from the get go to replace private enterprise, but only according to widely and undenied distributed tapes of Obama and the Blarny Frank) is really intended to take advantage of lower financing costs of GSEs and more.

The more is the marketing and political power that comes with their special political and pricing advantages controlled by every Congress which will also create burdens on the unfunded system , like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and more, all heading for insolvency. Why, to protect you as they say? I wish but really just to get reelected or elected in the first place.

Congress is too conflicted to be a principal in too many transactions or be the ones who control too many important enterprises behind the scenes, except as a pure regulator. And then the should be limited to what every legislator in an oversight committee personally reads and approves along with a certification that they know of no conflicting or duplicated regulations or laws.