New Fox News Op-ed: Lott's Numbers: Obama's Top 2 Most Outrageous Health Care Myths

My newest piece starts this way:

"Consumers do better when there is choice and competition. Unfortunately, in 34 states, 75% of the insurance market is controlled by five or fewer companies. In Alabama, almost 90% is controlled by just one company. Without competition, the price of insurance goes up and the quality goes down...an additional step we can take to keep insurance companies honest is by making a not-for-profit public option available in the insurance exchange..."

-- President Barack Obama, September 9

Two claims are made all the time in the health care debate: 1) that there is little competition among those providing health insurance and 2) that it is important to take the profit motive out of providing health insurance. Both are myths. It turns out that claims about too little competition are based on a misinterpretation of the data and that non-profit insurers are so abundant that the largest insurer in virtually every state is a non-profit. . . .

I think that this is one of my important pieces. Some discussions at other websites are here, here, here, here, and here.