Level playing field, hah

Jon Henke at TheNextRight:

Democrats argue that a Public Option won't crowd out private health insurance. It will just give them "healthy" competition. I'm skeptical, in large part because the government can and will simply legislate away the normal aspects of competition (the need to balance the books, to make cost/benefit calculations, and to negotiate on price/quality, rather than on "...or else we'll regulate you into submission").  Policies designed to keep down health care spending will not survive against politicians up for reelection.

The people responsible for Trillion dollar deficits are unlikely to usher in an era of health care spending restraint.

Other Democrats have just come right out and acknowledged that a public option would eventually crowd out private health insurance.

A public insurance plan able to use Medicare's bargaining power to secure deep discounts for its customers and ensure the maximum possible network would be cheaper and more efficient than private insurers. Over time, this increased efficiency would make the plan more attractive because it could offer more coverage for less money. As consumers recognized this fact, they would increasingly migrate towards the plan, and the public insurer would become, if not a de factosingle payer system, something close to it. The public insurer, in this scenario, is a game changer. [...] Insurers, predictably, howled that a public insurer with access to Medicare's market power would put them out of business. (Generally speaking, liberals agreed with that.)

Still other Democrats have pointed to the education system as an example of universal coverage with private alternatives.  On Twitter, Pandagon's Jesse Taylor argued that a Public Option wouldn't affect private insurance...

What healthcare choice can you exercise right now that a.) would be gone under a public option and b.) couldn't be taken away currently?

Politicians who make this argument should be confronted with this question: What school choice can you exercise right now that would be gone if we had vouchers and school choice for everybody?

Democrats refuse to level the playing field between the public and private options in education.  They will do the same thing in health care.