Open up and say ahhhh

The public option just a stepping stone to universal health care. The Dems aren't being honest about this, not that I think they can afford to be. If the public option ever passes (and it's not looking promising) then an emormous amount of health care related jobs will, in time, be permenantly eliminated. There's a reason why health care in the US is so expensive= bureaucracy, bureaucracy, bureaucracy.

Say I (like that unfortunate chap above) have a sore throat, so I go see my Primary physician, I use my flex spend card, so I can use my pre-tax dollars for health care costs. There's a positiion at my company that administers that through a 3rd party intermediary called Wageworks that has hundreds of employees.

There's an employee at my physician's office who's primary job function is to run my wageworks card for my ever increasing copay and then file my claim with Blue Cross Blue shield.

There is an employee at BCBS who intakes the claim, one that verifies coverage, one that confirms if the doctor is in network, one who reviews the claim and the coding to make sure all care is usual and customary, one who calls the providers and negotiates the rate that they will be paying, and one that actually issues payment to the doctor.

BCBS also has to support it's finance division, sales office, marketing, HR, Hippa compliance, coding experts, fraud investigators, legal departments, accounts payable, accounts receivable, etc. They employ tens of thousands of people in NC, and hundreds of thousands of people nationwide. And your health insurance premiums pay their salaries.

Is all of this bureaucracy really necessary for my doctor to prescribe me penecillin? Can you imagine how much paperwork would be involved if I had cancer?

Lets say I have a sore throat in England, or Canada, or Japan... I would go to the Dr. He would give me the same examination and write me the same prescription. His (or her, dang I'm sexist) salary is directly paid by the government. Simple, eh? No paperwork. No Byzantine coding or billing systems. Just You and Your Dr.
It sounds nice, doesn't it?

But it comes at the cost of millions of jobs, jobs that won't be replaced by government employment. Like many medical procedures, it's necessary but painful.