I'll try and give a "short" explanation for what the thinking of "those in bed with the current form this bill (read, "liberal left" and "1000+ page monstrosity that no one has read" respectively)" is.

Uninsured people come into our hospitals when they become critically ill. The hospitals are both legally and morally obligated to help them despite their lack of insurance, or means to pay. When they cannot pay their bill, the hospital is reimbursed by taxpayers.

Uninsured people, like normal people, can catch and spread disease. We would rather they seek treatment for that disease to reduce the spread of the disease, and in some cases, to give them a cheaper, earlier treatment rather than have to do highly expensive, invasive treatments when they come to the hospital later.

There are 47 million such people in the United States, and they are a) having to suffer treatable/preventable medical conditions, b) putting the rest of us at greater risk of communicable disease, and c) costing us more money than they would if we gave them taxpayer-funded insurance up front. I suppose some fraction are also d) never going to get sick or injured without insurance, but I doubt it's anywhere near 100%.

Therefore, universal coverage is a goal for reasons of morality, public health, and cost control.

The other issues the "1000+ page monstrosity that no one has read" (summarized here and here) is seeking to address is escalating costs, and the reliability of coverage (preventing rescissions and "pre-existing condition" denial, making it job-portable, etc.).

Really, the whole conversation is about reworking the system so people have good incentives. Patients have no disincentive to seek medical help, doctors have incentives focused on patient outcomes (and not the profit margins of tests and procedures), and insurers forced to compete on things like price & service, instead of careful risk selection (i.e. only insuring people who won't get sick).

Personally, I don't think incrementalism is sufficient. To address most of these issues, it will require changes that you would call "radical" like employer & individual mandates, or requiring insurance companies to accept all applicants, etc. I also don't think there's valid reason to fear making our system worse by quickly implementing policies that have been successfully used throughout the rest of the industrialized nations, especially when there's a human and monetary cost for delay.

Agree or disagree, that's what us liberals are thinking.

>> ^blankfist:
An 'opt out' system wouldn't work for socialized medicine, because in order for a socialized system to work it needs to the upper and middle class being forced to pay for the majority of it, and with an 'opt out' system all of them would certainly choose that.

The plan the progressives are pushing Democrats to implement is actually even more lax than an "opt out" system, it's an "opt in" system. So far the bill progressives like best is the House Tri-Committee bill, summarized here by Ezra Klein.

The public option itself is not directly taxpayer funded. It charges premiums just like a normal insurance company would. The overall bill does include a subsidy for people buying individual health insurance plans, but they may use their healthcare "credits" (or vouchers) to purchase a private plan if they so choose.

I like having both the public option and the subsidy, but I think the public option is the more important part, and it's not going to need any tax money at all.

As for the tax, hopefully you don't consider the top 1.5% of income earners "upper middle class".

I think at the end of the day, we can all agree the current system needs to be reworked, because it's broken. I believe the answer isn't in socializing health care, but rather removing corporations from it.

I'd love to see a rough outline of the bill you'd want to introduce.

GHeap,

You said: "I don't know what is greater, your ignorance or your aversion of the issue."

Almost certainly my ignorance, but it's not because of this issue. And I'm not avoiding anything. You made a claim about Romney's qualifications to serve under a Democratic president. I responded by pointing out that, in my opinion, most of his statements on the economy throughout the course of his campaign have been nothing but right-wing boilerplate. They haven't shown a nuanced understanding of the economy or a desire to be honest about our place in the world market (He's gonna bring all those auto industry jobs back to Michigan! Just you wait and see!). Moreover, I claimed that statements he made (in this video, no less!) about the Democrats and the war show him to lack sound political and strategic judgement. I'd say that lacking good judgement should pretty much disqualify you from having any cabinet position in any administration, but I guess that's just me trying to skirt the issue. Oh, wait...

The fact is, your suggestion was ill thought out. It would be as ludicrous as me saying that Romney, if he'd won, should've made Ralph Nader his Secretary of Labor.

"He's got the Reganomics thing going on. And despite how you feel about Regan, he did the economy justice."

First of all, his name was Ronald Reagan. Second, do you mean the "Reaganomics" that GHWB called "voodoo economics?" Or are you talking about the Reaganomics that no less a conservative than Mike Huckabee says is "more concerned with Wall Street than Main Street?" No, Ronald Reagan did not "do the economy justice" (mostly for the reasons Farhad points out above). And in the areas where he wasn't as awful as he could've been, it was largely because he had been embarrassed by the failure of his more ideologically driven first 2 years in office, and was forced to the left. As blogger Ezra Klein puts it:

"This is a guy who raised taxes six years in a row...passed a massive amnesty bill, wildly increased the size of the federal government, exploded the deficit, saved Social Security by instituting a large payroll tax, and expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit. Not to say he didn't have his conservative dogma humming along quietly in the background, but the last seven years of his administration saw him somewhat chastened, and far more deal-oriented."

So more Reaganomics? If that term means "fucking the economy up for 2 years until the situation becomes so bad politically that I have to try to pass some half-assed fixes that wouldn't be nearly as good as what the Democrats would have done all along," then I'll pass. So will any Democratic nominee for president, thankfully.

Finally, I'd point out that even though I thought what you said was stupid, I didn't downvote your comment. It was pretty cheap that you did so to me, but it's your character and reputation at stake when you do such things, not mine.