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As for the "private insurance will die"-argument, the guy with the economy degree wishes to say something.
Yes, there will be a huge market shift. And yes, some insurance companies will die, namely the ones who are in it for profit only and have grown to need the insane amount of money people pay them. Before they fold, they will most likely be bought by another insurance company that had the ability to adapt better.
Those companies will have to lower their plans, obviously, because otherwise, everyone would go to the government. Either that, or they increase their service and all that. This leads to a better service at the private companies than what you get with the government, more or less at the same price.
This again, will lead to people abandoning the public option and going for the private ones again, because they maybe have a better plan for families with children or people who need extensive dental work or any other kind of social or health-related situation you can think of, while the governmental plan will be a solid, but minimalist general plan. That's what's happened over here. I'm not really unhealthy, so I'm on a general plan with a private company. My ex-girlfriend has a body that doesn't produce estrogen, so she has to eat a handful of pills every day or her body goes into shock. So she's at some other company that have a good plan for hormonal things or womanly issues.
So all in all, this will not lead to a crushing of the insurance business, but rather a diversification. This is good. I'd go for that.
As for the "We'll help all them-there Mexicans, Billy-Bob-Joe!"-thing. You guys do realize that you need to sign a healthcare plan in order to get it? You're not just getting one thrown at you. And normally, you have to deliver proof of income. And if you're insured by your employer, you need a signed contract of employment too. Guess what illegal workers don't have?
Granted, it's not all fun and roses. There will be some abuse. But everything gets abused at some point. People are creative and smarter than most others give them credit for, they find loopholes and all that. There's this awesome quote from the IT-world that goes "Programming is a race: Programmers try to make a system idiot-proof. Meanwhile the universe tries to invent an even bigger idiot."
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