Former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt thinks no matter what you call a government-run insurance plan, a better name for it would be a Trojan horse.

Mike Leavitt

Leavitt, Utah’s former governor, penned a commentary for AmericaSpeakOn.org, an organization promoting free speech and civil rights.

In the piece, Leavitt says that the “public option” for health insurance supported by President Barack Obama is worded in such a way that “the language of competition and choice cleverly conceals the objective.

“But the President’s ‘public option’ is a gateway leading to 118 million Americans losing the option of private choice,” he wrote. “It is a strategy for government-run health care.  It is a Trojan horse.

Leavitt writes that advocates for government-run health care are pretending to sail away from “Medicare for all” or “universal coverage,” leaving the notion of a public option. This, he says is just like the Greeks leaving behind a Trojan horse for the city of Troy.

The “public option,” he said, is presented “as a means to promote competition and choice, but would prove fatal to both.”

“With a ‘public option’ in place, employers would bolt,” he wrote. “How many employers would continue to provide health insurance if the government were willing to take their place?  ”

The former HHS secretary cites a Lewin Group study that estimates 118 Americans would lose their private insurance under the “public option” with Medicare-like reimbursement rates.  Add that number, he said, to the 80 million already insured by Medicare and Medicaid, and “no private insurance system would be able to survive, and the United States would have a government-run system like Medicare.”

Leavitt adds that Medicare’s budget is projected to double within the next decade to top $1 trillion annual, and the Medicare hospital trust fund is projected to become insolvent by 2016.

“Yet the Obama administration wants to add new federal health-care spending at a projected – not actual – 10-year cost of $1,300,000,000,000?  This is like treating chronic obesity with a perpetual regimen of double calories,” he said.

Rather than get into the insurance business, Leavitt advocated that it empower consumers to pursue the highest-quality care at the lowest prices.

“Strong government action is needed to organize an efficient market where consumers can choose insurance plans and medical practitioners who offer the best value,” he said. “What is not needed is to replace the private market with a government-run system in which only the truly rich have a choice.”