The recent health care bill – Obamacare – that was signed into law Tuesday is nothing but an open attempt by government to drive the current health care insurance industry out of business, leaving people clamoring for a government-run health care system.

Let me explain.

I am sure a lot of people are confused as to how Obamacare passed without a public option when, last summer, Nancy Pelosi said, “There’s no way I can pass a bill in the House of Representatives without a public option.” One of the primary reasons liberals say they have been demanding a public option is that they think it is needed to create competition within the health care insurance industry. Of course, these same people are also opposed to Republican proposals to increase competition within the industry by allowing people to purchase insurance across state lines.

I will tell you the real reason why liberals wanted a public option: they want to drive private health care insurance out of business. Liberals know that the polls show that the majority of Americans are satisfied with their health care, but that most are also frustrated with the rising costs of health care. So who do they blame for the latter? They try and portray the private health care industry as villains; pretending health care officials are out there making all this money while screwing the American public over at the same time. The Obama sob stories don’t hurt this cause.

But, is the health care industry really screwing us over? The profit margin for health care plans is approximately 3.3 percent. When you break down businesses by industry, health care plans rank in the mid-eighties for profit margin. I don’t hear liberals calling out gas utilities, making a 12.6 percent profit margin. Clearly, these health care CEOs are not sitting around robbing us blind, it is just a reality that health care is very expensive to pay for. Something needs to be done about the cost of health care, and the solution is not as simple as providing a competitor that is interested only in breaking even, such as the government. The prices will still be too high.

So what do liberals propose to do about this? Their plan is health care rationing. They want to control costs by cutting down on expenses like they do in Europe and Canada. Liberals want to be able to dictate what you can get for health care and what you cannot, and when you can even get care. What drugs you will be allowed to have access to. What surgeries you are allowed to have. Anything and everything will be determined by government.

But liberals know they would never be able to pass a government run health care system right now. They have emphasized that this bill is not going to create a government run system many times.

But I disagree. Liberals know they cannot create a government-run health care system now because most Americans would rather have what they’ve already got. So what liberals need to do is get the current privatized health care insurance system to fall so far out of favor amongst Americans that most people would choose a government-run system instead. They started by vilifying the current industry, but that isn’t enough. They need to make the private insurance industry too expensive … If they can accomplish that, drastic change will be demanded by Americans, and that change will be towards government-run care.

How does this bill accomplish that? It is simple. The recently passed bill is going to raise the cost of health care insurance for all Americans because it strips away the ability for health care providers to discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions. As soon as the bill comes into effect, all of the people who currently are very sick and do not have health care insurance will have access to it. The only way the health care insurance industry can afford to take on all these additional costs without raising prices will be to have an even larger amount of people who are very healthy, and who do not currently have insurance, to start paying into the system.

But the health care bill does not make it mandatory for all people to have health care coverage. All it does is slap fines on people who decide not to have health care. There is no incentive for healthy people to buy insurance because the fines are far less than health care coverage would cost for many people. For example, in 2009 the average cost of insurance for family coverage was $13,375. This bill calls for a 2.5 percent fine on the family income if the family chooses not to have insurance. That means a family with an income of $100,000 would only have to pay $2,500, meaning they would be saving $10,875 by not having insurance.

Now you’re thinking, “Well what if that family gets sick and then needs insurance?” Obamacare makes it so health care insurance companies can no longer deny you. So once you get sick, you can simply buy into a plan no matter how sick you are. You can’t do that today, but you can do that moving forward under Obamacare.

I think most liberal politicians know this. They know that healthy people can drop their health care insurance now, pay the much cheaper fines and then, when they get sick, simply get back into their plans. This system will drive the prices of health care insurance through the roof. When this happens, liberals will have won. There will be the need for a government-run health care system to get costs back down and, at that point, there will be nothing to stop the government – because private health care will be on the verge of bankruptcy, and will need public support.

Now that Obamacare has passed, the only time we will see our health care costs come down is when government steps in and takes control. Of course, we could all just overthrow our government now and put a socialist regime in place to save us the time, but I think we would be wasting our effort. But it may not be necessary, because people already think we have a socialist president.

Alex Perry is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].