We need to get something straight: The American Dream continues to be more and more out of reach for the working class. According to Pew Research Center, the organization’s four measures of inflation have found that wages have not kept up since 2020. Today, the average price of gasoline is $4 a gallon according to AAA. Adding to all of this, the Trump administration’s tariffs in 2025 certainly did not make prices cheaper. To make matters worse, Congress has yet to refill the Obamacare subsidies, resulting in millions of Americans paying outrageous amounts for their health care premiums. All of this leads me to argue that America needs to take action on making the lives of the working class easier, health care being one of those actions.
Nobody should ever assume that once an elected official arrives in office, they will simply solve everyone’s problems. However, that does not mean that politicians are elected to do nothing. Their job is to do the bidding of the voters and attempt to make our lives a little better each day. And guess what, folks: The overwhelming majority of voters say the government has a responsibility to provide health care to Americans. According to Pew, 66% of voters say there should either be a public competitor in the market, or a single-payer system.
While I like the idea of a single-payer system, I think a public competitor is the path where we could get Democrats, independents and Republicans all on board and avoid any problems with the Senate filibuster. The public option would be significantly cheaper in the sense that the government would have less overhead (2-3%) compared to private health care companies (20%). Adding to this, the employees of the public option would be government employees, meaning they would not make any bonuses on sales, whereas employees in the private sphere do.
A lot of people on the right could be concerned that droves of people could flee to the public option since there is no intent to make profit, and they are likely right. However, what they might get wrong is that it would force the hand of the private companies to lower their prices, requiring the health care market to shift from the control of oligopolies to a competitive market once and for all.
Lastly, think about the employers that could either switch over to the public option, or they could remain with their current provider if they lower their prices. That means employers do not have to take so much money out of their employees’ checks to pay their portion of their coverage. All in all, this would make the health care market a classic story of competitive capitalism in America.
To be clear, capitalism is a great economic system. However, it can sometimes go wrong and needs to be checked. If there were a public option, it would hopefully make one less thing worrisome for Americans and their finances.
Jack Teoli
Newhall
