Below The Beltway

This is ironic to say the least:

A little-noticed tidbit in Saturday’s Washington Post is sure to raise eyebrows among liberal supporters of a gorvernment-run healthcare plan: the plan is likely to be administered by a private insurance company, the very companies that progressive activists are trying to unseat.

The public-option debate is frustrating some Democrats, who have come to believe that a government-run plan is neither as radical as its conservative critics have portrayed, nor as important as its liberal supporters contend. Any public plan is likely to have a relatively narrow scope, as it would be offered only to people who don’t have access to coverage through an employer.

The public option would effectively be just another insurance plan offered on the open market. It would likely be administered by a private insurance provider, charging premiums and copayments like any other policy. In an early estimate of the House bill, the Congressional Budget Office forecast that fewer than 12 million people would buy insurance through the government plan.

Supporters of the public plan contend that it will help to trim healthcare costs, as a public insurer wouldn’t need to generate profits. Health insurance companies typically earn profits of around two to four percent, which amounts to billions of dollars for some firms.

Many on the left will probably find this surprising, but if you know anything at all about how government employee or military health plans are operated you’d know that this is exactly how it works — the government solicits bids for companies to administer the health benefit plans and those bids are heavily fought over because there worth billions of dollars to the companies involved.

The “public option,” if it passes, would probably end up being a huge boon to the very companies that the people who favor it despise the most.