[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 14]
[House]
[Page 19567]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




      THE GOVERNMENT IS AN UNFAIR COMPETITOR TO THE PRIVATE SECTOR

  (Mr. INGLIS asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. INGLIS. Mr. Speaker, there is much to agree on in health care 
reform. There is also something that we very much disagree on. The 
disagreement has to do with the public option, and it has to do with 
the question about whether private insurance companies need the 
discipline of the competition from a public sector plan or a publicly 
provided plan. If you've ever been in business and you've watched the 
government come into competition with you, you know that it is an 
unfair competitor because the government has the ability to subsidize 
its operations. The result is that when government enters an area that 
the private sector is working in, the government ends up becoming the 
provider there.
  That's what we fear would happen in the midst of a public option: the 
private insurance companies would be forced out; the public option 
would become really the only game in town. And the result would become 
pretty quickly a government system of providing insurance and health 
care. But there's much else that we can agree on.
  So the question is, Can the folks who control this House leave aside 
just one thing and then we cooperate?

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