Should health care reform include a private option?

That is the debate we should have had. (And the compromise we should have eventually made)

I quit my private insurance... way too expensive and the benefits stingy.

Aren't private options what we have now, along with employers' group plans?

Almost anyone who was insured before health care reform had and still have private insurance.

:yoiks:

One of the clearest, simplest and most inspiring bills you'll ever read.

Here's a link to the PDF.

Section 104 (b) makes a provision for private insurance. It says

over and above the government plan, I wouldn't be averse to you being able to buy it on the private market. Hey, I'd even imagine that government regulators would be able to keep you from getting ripped off too.

You're welcome. Now, when are we going to have this conversation for real?

If rich folks want to be fast-tracked for tummy tucks, then can pay extra.

Our President could've used the bully pulpit (whatta concept!) to tell Americans what is obvious to people all over the world: the best, most affordable, and most humane healthcare system is a single-payer public system.

Then, like the skillful rhetorician he is when he wants to be, he could've played to both our humility and our patriotism by explaining that although by rights we should be embarrassed to be one of the last of the so-called "developed" nations to institute single-payer universal healthcare, we can use our late start to our advantage by crafting a system that borrows from the strongest elements of systems all over the world while avoiding the weaker ones, resulting in a uniquely American solution that we can all be proud of.

Of course, he didn't do that. Instead, he did what he has done over and over again.

The point I'm trying to make is that Obama negotiates from a position of weakness, using right-wing frames. But it isn't just him. It's most of us as well.

After 30 years of relentless corporatist propaganda, even many of us see the world through a right-wing filter.

Policy-wise, this administration has been a vast improvement over the previous one. I'm sure I'll be voting for President Obama again next year. But he has actually moved the country backwards in terms of acceptance of right-wing memes and rejection of leftward ones.

I would have preferred a fighter who got no legislation passed, but who forcefully and eloquently let the country know where he (and we) stood.

Not for basic comprehensive health care.