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The Speech 2

September 10th, 2009 at 9:30 am David Frum | 10 Comments |

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To illustrate just the harmlessness of his public option, the president promised it would add choice in “the same way public colleges and universities provide additional choice and competition to students without in any way inhibiting a vibrant system of private colleges and universities.” I just looked it up: Public colleges and universities accommodate more than 80% of America’s full and part-time students and collect more than 60% of all tuition dollars. The private system may be vibrant, but it is also marginal. Or maybe that’s exactly what the president has in mind for private health insurance?

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10 Comments so far ↓

  • procha // Sep 10, 2009 at 10:37 am

    don’t see anythig wrong with that. do you?

  • balconesfault // Sep 10, 2009 at 10:53 am

    Let’s see … a universal system of affordable education that is highly subsidized by government, with the option for those who don’t feel their interests are best served by this system either because of religious background or because they want a higher (more elite) standard of education being able to purchase education outside the system. Yeah, that seems pretty good.

    FWIW, though Ivy League educated myself, my son is currently a student at an excellent honors program at a state university, costing me about 1/3 the money. I was inclined to send him to a private university, and he was accepted to some elite ones, but that state school is providing tremendous value and we’re very pleased. My nephew, on the other hand, is attending my alma mater, and it is perfect for him, and his parents are very pleased.

    The important point here is that I see little evidence of state universities “settling” … accepting that they have a number of students who will choose them based on economics, and providing uniform mediocrity as a product. Instead, if you go to state universities around the country, you see evidence of a constant struggle for excellence, an attitude that they need to compete for the best students against the private colleges (eg, with the honors program my son is in). A public healthcare system run with the same ideals may well end up outperforming the private system in many respects, at much lower costs to consumers.

  • sinz54 // Sep 10, 2009 at 11:13 am

    balconesfault: if you go to state universities around the country, you see evidence of a constant struggle for excellence
    That’s because there is more than one of them. They compete against each other, just like states compete against each other to attract businesses and jobs. And they have SAT admission requirements–if you flopped in high school, you won’t even get into a good state university.

    ObamaCare’s public option would be more analogous to having just ONE national public university system that accepts everybody who applies, and allows them all to graduate with bachelor’s degrees regardless of academic performance.

    A multitude of health co-operatives of the type favored by Baucus, would be the closest analogy to the multitude of state universities we now have. But even that’s not completely analogous, because state universities don’t have “guaranteed issue.”

    A college that does have open admissions regardless of SAT scores or high school performance is City College of New York. And it’s universally known as a diploma mill.

  • Travis // Sep 10, 2009 at 1:08 pm

    Health Care proposal = College Education ‘industry’ is not a perfect analogy, of course. As you point out, Mr. Frum, the public vs. private concentration is not analagous (yet). But, the fact that private universities are performing just fine with competition against an abundance of public universities is one indication that health care reform with a public option will not crush private industry.

  • EscapeVelocity // Sep 10, 2009 at 1:42 pm

    Yep, and the only people that have choice really is the well to do, and the heavily subsidized.

    I can accept, perhaps even support the Co Ops, the Germans do this and while these Co Opts have 60 percent of the business, there is still a robust private sector that works hard to provide better service and product than the Co Opts.

  • roland.lindsey // Sep 10, 2009 at 1:47 pm

    I think his point was that both private and public educations exist and thrive in our country. I disagree with Obama that the public option will have any sort of measurable impact as currently defined. It provides no competition since the people the public option will serve don’t buy insurance anyway. It’s going to be insurance company #1301, only owned by the government.

  • mycelf // Sep 10, 2009 at 2:07 pm

    You’re saying the fact that we have a post-secondary education system that is accessible, has a vibrant private sector and isn’t going bankrupt is a failure?

    We can only hope that health care reform fails in a like manner.

  • ltoro1 // Sep 10, 2009 at 8:02 pm

    One of the biggest weaknesses of this analogy it that the costs of higher education may be going up faster than the cost of healthcare.

  • mknowles // Sep 11, 2009 at 11:07 am

    “I just looked it up: Public colleges and universities accommodate more than 80% of America’s full and part-time students and collect more than 60% of all tuition dollars. The private system may be vibrant, but it is also marginal. Or maybe that’s exactly what the president has in mind for private health insurance?”
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ What the president has in mind is health care for all at a price that competes with other countries’ health care systems like Canada, England, France, etc.

    Why should we be paying $10K more or $8K more annually (or whatever the number is) more than everyone else in the world? This is a burden I don’t want to carry anymore. It’s purely a business decision. Why should my hard earned income be dedicated to health insurance company profits? I’d rather keep more of my money.

    Single payer is the best way to go, but if we can’t get that, I’ll settle for a robust, Medicare-like public option.

  • balconesfault // Sep 11, 2009 at 11:34 am

    Why should we be paying $10K more or $8K more annually (or whatever the number is) more than everyone else in the world?

    While the British Healthcare System is underfunded, which accounts for many of its problems … it still needs to be noted -

    Per capita, Americans pay the same amount in taxes to run Medicare and Medicaid that the Brits do to run the British Health System. In other words, the amount they pay in taxes provides a baseline coverage for the entire population, while we pay the same per capita to only provide baseline coverage for the poor and elderly.

    Hell, if you only took the amount of corporate tax revenues to the treasury that would be unleashed via a public healthcare system, or about $225 billion in foregone tax revenue per year, and combined that with the money we spend on Medicare, Medicaid, Military, Government, and VA healthcare benefits … we could probably double per capita what the British spend on the NHS without adding a penny in taxes.

    And I would assume that we, being Americans, would create a national healthcare system that’s 3x better than what the Brits have if we’re spending 2x what they spend per capita. Because we’re superior and all that…

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