Innovation, Flint Knapping and Health Care

Many opponents of health care reform say that innovation will suffer if the private health insurance industry is taken over by public paid plans. I hear this all the time, and yet I have not heard what they mean by that assertion. I also read an interesting article on flint knapping today. (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111843678) It seems that pre-historic man, over 165,000 years ago, began heat treating stones to harden them and make them behave more predictably when knapped, or chipped, to make sharper tools and spear heads. Innovation! But were they motivated, or incentivized by free enterprise profit, or just the need to make a better product? I say the latter, and so is health care. The very notion that we will grow dumb and stop innovating because our health care may be paid for by the government is just plain dumb- and not very innovative!