But the key here is the public option and what that means. Obama has said countless times that if you like your current health insurance, you can keep it and that is probably the biggest piece of misinformation out there because there are so many other factors that play into that. First and foremost, most people in this country get their insurance from their employer and if your employer decides to stop offering your current coverage, then you cannot keep it.
The question there becomes how likely companies are to stop offering their current coverage and that is unclear to me. It appears that companies will be required to offer the government plan as an option. I don't know what paperwork or fees are required in simply offering a plan to employees, so I don't know what the likelihood is that companies will continue to offer their current plans as well. I'm guessing that a lot will depend on how many people within a company opt for the government plan as the premiums for group policies are usually tied very directly to how many people are insured within the group. Larger groups mean lower premiums, so in most cases, the premiums for the current plan will likely increase, leading to companies only offering the government plan for health insurance (which also reduces paperwork for the HR department). So for most people, it is unlikely that they will be able to continue with their current plan.
Then there is the issue of how insurance companies deal with costs. I have heard at one point that the public option would not be allowed to be subsidized. However, the more I see recently, it appears that this is no longer the case and the public option will be government subsidized. What that means is that every taxpayer will be helping to offset the costs of the public option, even if they have their own insurance. More to the point, what that means is that the public option's premiums will likely be significantly less than premiums from other insurance companies. The White House will spin this and say that insurance companies will be able to compete with the lower premiums if they would cut their marketing budget and administrative costs. Personally, I believe that insurance companies pay their administrators (CEO's, etc) way too much, so I agree that they should make some cuts there, but the fact is that the public option, if indeed subsidized, will create an artificial competition that is effectively rigged.
So, it is my opinion that a lot of health insurance companies will not be able to compete and will eventually go out of business. I don't know how long this will take, but the likely eventual outcome of this is a single payer system. Most people will be on the government's "public option" plan and a few insurance companies will survive, but will be much more expensive. Using Canada as a historical example, the insurance companies that do survive will do so because they can actually take care of people while the socialized...I mean, public option, will mean long waits in lines and other such.
BTW - the problem with socialized medicine isn't that it automatically leads to bad coverage. The problem is that the government dictates how much doctors are paid for procedures under the public option instead of market forces. Insurance companies sometimes aren't much better, but if you try to cut costs by limiting how much you pay doctors, fewer and fewer doctors will be willing to take your insurance (or become doctors in the first place), which leads to longer and longer lines for those doctors that do continue to practice. If the government sets the doctor's wages too high, it means more taxes.