Reply #55: "What concerns me is... the politically foolish... mandating that people buy private insurance..."

[LooseWilly]

(First sentence of the last paragraph of your own quote.)

Mandating insurance purchase, while not offering an alternative to the (regarded as crooked) insurance industry insurance options. Bad. I agree with BooMan... it feels like a tax, like being forced to buy some shit that never seemed worth it before, just to have my money, our money, keep the prices that businesses, and corporations, pay for health insurance for their employees (benefits on top of wages?? and wages better than mine to start with... and I have to pay to stabilize their benefits??) stable?

I'm not sure that progressive perspectives are necessarily "colored" by race... but rather by class and the experiences that come of that. That race and class are intertwined is idiotic to deny, but likewise to try to "untwine" the two is also liable to confuse the influence on perspective.

The uninsured and underpaid who fake their way through with what they've got, black, white, brown, red, yellow, or green... are mostly all liable to object to mandated insurance. Pull the mandate, the working class isn't liable to object (from what I know of us) to "reform" for some. Add a public option, and we might actually think we're not being screwed for a change (which is probably why the public option had to be dropped).

I'm with BooMan though... "What concerns me is less the imperfection of the Senate bill than the politically foolish and dangerous idea of mandating that people buy private insurance."

I'm not sure I'm as afraid of the Republican Party though... not when Democratic Party actions sometimes run so close to parallel... I'm personally more afraid of the Democratic Party not being afraid of consequences from their own base, if they behave like Republicans...