I watched a few minutes of President Obama’s press conference today where it seemed like a bit of open Q&A.  On the topic of health care he was asked how he thinks that a government run health insurance option wouldn’t drive existing health care companies out of business.  He didn’t think it would would and he suggested that if a government run program or option could run the program more efficiently with lower administrative costs and run on a not-for-profit base they could force other insurance companies to lower their costs by adding competition to the market.

Now, of course the existing big companies insist that they are offering their prices as cheaply as possible.  They insist that competition from a not-for-profit with likely government and tax payer subsidies would hurt them.  I think we could all argue that this may not be the case.  But the idea of a government run health care provider (insurer) is an interesting one at least.  At best, its a good idea.  I respect and appreciate Obama’s desire to bring reform only on the platform of working with the money that is already in the system.  We’ll see how that works out.

I do have one question for the president though:

Can you name another government program or agency that runs more efficiently with lower administrative costs than a private, for-profit counterpart?