Gibbs on the public option and competition

(meme) ABC:

STEPHANOPOULOS: "[Obama] wants a public option, but… "

GIBBS: "And he still does."

STEPHANOPOULOS: "But -- he wants it, but will he sign a bill that doesn't include it? Because it can't get through the Senate."

GIBBS: "Well, we're not going to prejudge what the process will be when we sign a bill, which the president expects to do this year. The president strongly believes that we have to have an option like this to provide choice and competition, to provide a check on insurance companies, because without it, again, we're going to have markets as big as a whole state of Alabama, almost 90 percent of which is dominated by one insurance company."

So the answer isn't to campaign against the milieu of state-by-state regulation that are more difficult for small companies to comply with, prevent interstate competition, and encouraged consolidation into near-monopolies for each state (and groups of states) to begin with?

Instead the answer is to create a new government-run insurance option to provide the competition these government-caused near-monopolies lack?

The left's folly in a nutshell: When regulation doesn't work as desired and instead consolidates industry into uncompetitive conglomerates, advocate a government takeover of that industry. If the dream of national single-payer can't be met, sell a new government-run option as providing a replacement for the competition that it regulated-out of the market to begin with...

Small wonder that small business owners are among the most Republican voters in the country.  Nobody wants insurance reform more than these most burdened with health care cost inflation...but the reforms  these business people would advocate to restore competition to the insurance market are much different from the left's tomfoolery.