Not that we're going to get it anyway but if the ACA goes down no one will try health care again for a generation.

If Dems retake House and gain solid majority in Senate in 2012, which isn't out of the question, and Obama has
4 more years to get the job done -- and done RIGHT this time -- we may well get a Single-Payer bill passed, and
we'll all be so much better off for it.

To his critics, Obama can say, "Hey, the Supremes made me do it! I tried to work out a deal with GOP and the
health care industry, and SCOTUS says it's 'unconstitutional', so we're just going getter done now, and done right
with a single-payer system, like most every other country in the Western hemisphere has, and works well for
them. Thank you very much."

The owners of the congress will never allow their minions to vote for it. I don't see how you can possibly be that optimistic.

will have a much stronger grip on the Congress should the mandate stand institutionalizing the for profit "health" insurance industry and guaranteeing them vast numbers of captured customers increasing their wealth and power while creating a financial loop of bribery and lobbying back to future Congresses that will serve to work against the best interests of the people.

Whatever good is in the law now will be targeted by that industry for erosion and the people will be forced to pay for it.

what does it tell you then that "they" let this one pass? Americans need to hurt some more before they realize what needs to be done. That or everyone go to their individual states and fight for it just like Massachusetts and Vermont did. Its clearly unconstitutional and not because republicans said so.

We need better healthcare system not an insurance care system.

If they don't want single-payer.

I'm not certain that a single payer scenario will play out, but it's certainly not inconceivable to me,
so I like imagining into that happening, rather than being all bummed out and deciding beforehand
that it won't happen.

that's for sure.

so sick of seeing defeatism here.

and to cement what we have now structurally for as long as they can "shrink the pig" by letting the cartel loot the treasury and the "small people" have a few pennies to extract.

I also have little patience for the "no one will try health care for a generation (and I've seen a silly 50 years) for a couple of critical reasons. 1) No way the present business model when combined with declining wages and reduced or less generous benefits makes it highly improbable that the industry can just keep going like some fantastical perpetual motion machine and more critically 2) Why the hell would we allow that? The only option to not relentlessly fight for the American people and the very future of our economy should be to run as a Republican.
Stop laying around waiting for some "kind master" to throw a bone under the table.

What happens if we go on as we have? Project the trends out, look at the numbers, consider the wages, plug in the amount of people out of the workforce, and factor in the demographic shifts and nothing will not and cannot fly.

Reality trumps political reality and the laws of physics and mathematics overrides and ignores political calculations and machinations. The underlying system is structurally unsound and thumbs its nose at the actual universe, it is not workable. The Wealthcare and Profit Protection Act just moves the deck chairs around the Titanic, delaying the inevitable by effectively throwing the full faith and credit of the United States and every working age soul at the cartel to stave off the unavoidable utter systemic collapse for an additional generation or so, at ruinous cost and a far deeper hole to climb out of in a time of much greater resource scarcity than today.

A people and a nation cannot forever trade away long term benefit to avoid short term pain and grow and flourish, the pattern should be obvious. This is the same thought process that has left our infrastructure crumbling and ever more antiquated rather than to deal with comparable modest investment, the ever growing can is kicked down the road and molehills turn into mountains and mountains turn into extinction threatening asteroids.

Doing nothing is laughably impossible, even from the jaundiced perspective of the insurance cartel and the path to a solution being strived for now will be hugely devastating when it collapses and can no longer maintain the illusion of function. There is not enough matter to shove into the black hole to shut it down.

It consumes us and our economy. The people and the government will break in the face of the monster that feeds and grows unendingly. Propping it up without a clear means of transition and the ability to execute it is a sure killer and we don't at all have that here, potential perhaps but unlikely at best as written and the required changes dictate a far more assertive Congress than the one that passed the bill.

The CBO has estimate out 20 years, that is what we can expect and even that carries a substantial amount of speculation and assumptions.

They aren't going to even try. I'm glad everyone is optimistic and wants to fight and I'm right on board with that. But congress does not listen to us, does not care what we think and have been so bought off they they will never act on our behalf. What part of that isn't clear enough for you to see it's a pipe dream? What have you seen in the past forty years that would make you think that all of a sudden Congress will start doing the work of the people and not the 1%?

I don't want it to be this way but that's the way it is.

and go away sulking.
Fuck that,we fight for what is right and never give up.

let'em die. Mcconnel has already said they will do little or nothing.

If nothing is what they're inclined to do you couldn't ask them for better.
Nothing could be worse than for a phony reform to be enacted, getting in the way and making things worse for 10 or 12 years while a bunch of rich assholes with government paid Cadillac plans for themselves and their families beat back every complaint with "But we reformed your health care! Everyone has Medical Savings Accounts now and malingerers are stamping license plates in the debtors' jails. It's fixed now and you should thank us!"

, "it will take some time to see our results", "we had some "unexpected setbacks with implementation" and excuses followed by any number of years and decades of goofy tweaks in a "reform" that was never built to deal with the structural failures in both the narrow focus of funding that it is falsely promoted as solving and the broader healthcare system as a whole that is out of hand.

Honestly, when you make free riders the epicenter of our issues you should take a swift kick in the ass and a seat in the corner with a dunce cap on.

The access problem quickly morphed into a participation problem and largely to the exclusion of anything else and completely to the elephants in the room, that not only remain the basis for access to healthcare but entrenched and enriched. The biggest problems like the health insurance cartel, the employer based system, insane pool fragmentation, underfunded and outmatched state regulators, wild inflation, and affordability.

All the dumb as dogshit we did before, we will continue to do and actually attempt to build on that foundation of quicksand with a few pay to play features that make folks in reasonable places take to the streets for being discussed as benefits.

I also think people forget that we've made a devil's bargain and have little else to trade to get further concessions, the only path is to mack them and if that is the intent then why bolster them?
People are all like "we're going to regulate them into a public utility and this legislation allows us to do so" and ignore that there are no teeth, no resources for enforcement, and no restructure of the "regulatory" system and willfully leaves the predators with an anti-trust exemption while keeping as many people as possible OUT of the exchanges (aka the only real point of leverage), minimizing the ability of competition to impact systemic costs as well.

Yeah, just like the SEC regulated Goldman Sachs.
The bill was written with Big Insurance literally in the Senate Finance Committee room and dictating. How can a law originating in regulatory capture not lead to more of the same? The one thing they took good care of was to order the arrangement so that the Insurance Cartel donations would keep coming and coming. Cost controls? Nope! (Unless someone is so dumb as to believe that a Medical Loss Ratio is anything but an incentive for insurers to encourage their vendors to raise their prices as quickly as possible.) Reasons for Big Insurance to keep cutting checks to the likes of Max Baucus, Kent Conrad and Bill Tauzin? Everlasting under this public-private arrangement.

"We're gonna regulate them!" Yeah. That one always gives me a laugh. A very bitter laugh, but sometimes you have to take whatever laughs you can get.

And sometimes you have to take whatever improvements you get. Or at least be a little grateful for the people (many DUers) who are in a much better standing now?

BTW any proof of big insurance writing the bill because I have proof they spent $1,000,000/day lobbying against it.

The American Idol voter glazes over, if it even registers with him at all.

and the freeper heads will explode

He signed into law what GOP and Dems sent to him.