Letter to the Editor

Nathaniel French delivers several wrongheaded attacks on the public option in his editorial piece titled "Protect health care privacy" in The Daily Campus last Tuesday. These range from a slippery slope argument drowning in hypotheticals - the public option suddenly morphing into the dread specter of Uncle Sam himself, hovering over a woman's hospital bed and forbidding her abortion - to a confounding contradiction: government insurance being both so excellent that it puts every private insurance company out of business, yet so terrible that it results in stingily "rationed" care.

But perhaps the biggest problem with French's editorial is his framing of the issue. He portrays the public option as taking away a fundamental choice. This ignores the fact that many people have no choice to make.

Take Nikki White, for example, the subject of a recent piece in The New York Times. Diagnosed with lupus, a very treatable disease, she was systematically rejected by every insurance company due to her "pre-existing condition" until she died at the age of 32, unable to afford the medical care required to control her illness.

Take Christina Turner, recently interviewed in the Huffington Post, who was refused coverage for years because her rape was considered a "pre-existing condition." These and millions of others who desperately need care are turned away from private insurance companies, while healthy people pay premiums for their insurance and are oftentimes dumped by their insurance providers once they actually exhibit signs of sickness.

This is the status quo. To argue against reform and for continued "privacy" in health care, as French and others who take his position do, by claiming that a government insurance plan would result in rationed care, is to be either utterly blind to or willfully ignorant of the current situation in health care. What the private insurance companies are offering right now is not even care; among the 44 million uninsured, there is nothing even to ration.

What then would a public health insurance option offer? Currently, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has proposed a bill that includes a public option with an "escape hatch," meaning that government-run insurance would be universally offered unless individual state legislatures chose to opt out of it.

This government insurance would be offered on an exchange for individuals and small businesses; those receiving health insurance from a large employer would not be eligible for it, and those happy with their current plan would absolutely be able to keep it.

Government insurance would drive down premium costs and promote, rather than destroy, competition. Look no further than Medicare, a popular and successful government-run program, for an example of what this new plan could look like.

The discussion about this facet of health care reform is important, but the misinformation that is being propagated is incredibly dangerous. Our health care system is broken, and capitalist fear-mongering will go nowhere in achieving any sort of solution. Health care is not a privilege; it's a basic human right. In fact, it has been termed the civil right of our generation.

The question, now, is whether we will be able to engage in productive discourse to make it a universal reality.

- Charanya Krishnaswami

Senior political science major