Mick: Obama's opposing stances on health care, vouchers

Mick: Obama's opposing stances on health care, vouchers: "This summer's health care debate has centered around the creation of a government-run insurance program to compete with those offered by private insurers. President Barack Obama says 'public option' isn't intended to end private health insurance, repeatedly telling us that if we like our private plans, we'll be able to keep them. A government plan, he and congressional Democrats insist, will simply provide needed competition for private insurers. And this will be a good thing, of course, because competition leads to better service, lower costs, and more consumer choice.

Now a cynic might question the sincerity of the president's newfound fealty to the virtue of markets, individual choice, and vigorous competition. A hopeless anti-Obama zealot might even suggest the heretofore undemonstrated allegiance to free-market principals is more a matter of tactical convenience than sincerely held belief — or it is simply a device by which to get the big nose of Uncle Sam's camel in our national medical tent.

However, is that sort of skepticism really warranted?

True, there was little evidence of this belief in his words or deeds as a lawyer, activist, politician or president. Yes, Obama has been on record as recently as six years ago as supporting a single-payer (i.e., government monopoly) system. People, though, can change even their most fervently held beliefs with reflection and new information.

It is also true there are far more than 1,000 firms already offering health insurance in the United States. So, if a person were skeptically inclined toward the president, he might wonder how one new competitor on a truly level playing field would magically realign medical delivery in a way existing competitors couldn't; particularly when that new competitor had already wrought the notoriously ineffective Veterans Administration health care delivery system and the notoriously insolvent Medicare program.

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