Yes, there are some great provisions in the health care bill, BUT...

[Lydia Leftcoast]

what's the point of making it into a 2000-page monstrosity?

I've become cynical enough to think that the purpose is to hide minefields for the unwary, lots and lots of waffling "fine print," lots and lots of little unrelated goodies such as tax breaks for specific companies, lots of provisions that should have been administrative rules.

Ending rescission, ending discrimination based on pre-existing conditions, removing anti-trust exemption from the insurance companies, these are good things. Excellent things. Shoulda been done long ago. (If you'd add ending discrimination based on age, I'd be very happy.)

So why not pass them NOW as separate bills effective immediately?

Why are the Dems treating this as an all-or-nothing package? What's with this four-year wait before the bill goes into effect?

How could the Republicanites logically argue against a bill that said, "Insurance companies will no longer dump you if you get sick after faithfully paying premiums for twenty years"?

How about lowering the age of eligibility for Medicare by five years every year, which would bring younger, healthier people into the system and help solve its financial problems? That would be extremely popular with the army of unemployed and under-employed people over 50.

Even though I despise everything the Republicanites stand for, I can understand why it's easy for them to get people riled up about these monster bills.

The solution would be to unpackage them, pass the least controversial and most urgent ones first, and then let the dust settle before moving on to major reforms. Once people see that the minor steps aren't so scary, they'll be more open to a major overhaul, including (I hope) some sort of publicly financed system that is open to everyone.