Aetna CEO Threatened Obamacare Pullout If Feds Opposed Humana Merger

The best is probably a mix, like Singapore. The citizens win in the case the government provider is efficient or inefficient, because in either scenario the government sets a floor of efficiency that private companies can't go under and survive. In a purely private market there's the potential for collusion, or in a heavily regulated market there's the potential for forced inefficiencies. When you just have the single government provider, you cut off the possibility of doing much better, and you create a big incentive for everyone in the industry to inflate their costs because the government always pays.