No one is Forcing You to Change

I know the President has said on many occasions that "If we like our current insurance policy, the government will not make us abandon it." He's said this in various ways and I believe he is sincere when he says this.

I also think about the fact that he has never run a business.

Most businesses are in the business of making money and most families are about turning out healthy happy capable adults. For the sake of this discussion, let's think of businesses as being like families, wanting to churn out happy customers and have a profit margin and succeed without being strung out by too many obligations or too many activities or too much overhead.

A business has operating costs. So does a family. A business will add to operating costs only if it is necessary to improve the business. It's called investment. Families add burdens of classes or an extra car to make the business of running a family easier, trading money for time or convenience or enrichment that will pay off both now in enjoyment and possibly later with a life skill.

There are some families who opt to put their children in Catholic schools and thus make an investment. They do not get to opt out of property taxes which pay for public schools. They do not re-coop on their investment of tax money fiscally, but believe the pay out of the extra cash for tuition,is worth it. After all, it's their kids.

Very very few businesses are going to say, "I want to pay taxes to finance the public option on top of paying for my own plan. While I was happy with the plan before there was a public option, now I must decide. Do I want to pay taxes for one health care policy I don't use in addition to offering one which I pay out of pocket pre-tax?" Very few businesses will want to pay double tuition as it were, taxes and private school even if they liked their plans before. Businesses, being about making money, will opt for the public option and only pay the tax once. With an additional tax if the plans they offered were premium, the businesses will say "No thank you." They're not going to say, "After all, it's my employees."

While no one is forcing them NOT to pay more, most of them will when given the option of not paying, will out of merely a sense of good business, opt for the public option.

While we may have liked our prior plans better, there will be no take it or leave it in this scenario. Businesses, being businesses, will opt for the public option that helps the bottom line, and so there will be no take it or leave it option, just "Take it."