A new Quinnipiac University Poll says that 69% of Americans want a government-run health insurance option, while only 28% of the respondents would use it. What is really telling is:

Only 15 percent of voters would be willing to pay $500 to $1,000 more in taxes each year for a health care plan that reduces costs and covers those who don't have health insurance. Another 27 percent would pay less than $500 per year, with 3 percent who would pay $1,000 to $3,000 and 45 percent who don't want to pay additional taxes.

This is interesting for two reasons:

1. The average family with health insurance already pays an extra $1,000 a year in premiums to pay for health care for the uninsured, while the average individual pays an extra $370 according to a report by Families USA.
2. A government-run health insurance option will have "significant price advantages" over private health insurers according to Republican Senator Olympia Snowe and Conservative columnist George Will.

So, in effect a public option would probably reduce costs by insuring the uninsured and forcing private health insurance companies to become more cost competitive. Yet, pollsters are asking questions about paying more in taxes for a public option without debating the fact that costs would likely significantly decrease.

But what about government bureaucrats running health care and getting between you and your doctor? That is already occurring, the bureaucrats are just working at for-profit insurance companies who have already testified before Congress that they would not commit to limiting rescissions to only policyholders who intentionally lie or commit fraud to obtain coverage. A policy where:

an investigation by the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations showed that health insurers WellPoint Inc., UnitedHealth Group and Assurant Inc. canceled the coverage of more than 20,000 people, allowing the companies to avoid paying more than $300 million in medical claims over a five-year period.

It also found that policyholders with breast cancer, lymphoma and more than 1,000 other conditions were targeted for rescission and that employees were praised in performance reviews for terminating the policies of customers with expensive illnesses.

Do you really want to trust the private health insurance companies more? They are the ones who

have forced consumers to pay billions of dollars in medical bills that the insurers themselves should have paid, according to a report released yesterday by the staff of the Senate Commerce Committee.