Dean was extra-persuasive on Morning Joe... hard to challenge

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

We've reached a point where both sides of the argument can offer lines that seem decisive... until you hear the other side's lines again.

One one side, no matter how screwed up the bill is it will provide subsidized insurance for some have-nots, somewhere, someday. It is hard to argue against that, particularly since so much money has been shoveled to haves lately. (That said, those who argue heatedly and hyperbolically that bill opponents "don't care about 150,000 dead" are, of course, the lowest sort and deserving of nothing but dismissal.)

On the other side, watching Dean's performance today I couldn't rebut his points... at least not with sincere enthusiasm.

He argued that this legislation will be the foundation of healthcare in America going forward--that any subsequent moves will be built upon this bill--and that the nature of that foundation is not being determined by any actual policy analysis, but rather by the whims of a few and the desperation of the many to get some bill passed for political reasons.

I find this argument persuasive because I respect the organic nature of policy and reform--in the way one respects gravity or a grizzly bear--and am big on the sensitivity of complex dynamic systems to initial conditions. Tiny differences in initial conditions manifest themselves as surprisingly big phenomena. (The proverbial beating butterfly wing in China that causes a storm halfway around the world is an instance of the power and unpredictability of small differences in initial conditions.)

This bill will, in fact, shape everything going forward for our whole lives even if we somehow (unlikely) had the votes and will to "fix" it in the near future. It will not completely determine everything that happens but it's influence will always be there. We cannot fully predict how initial conditions play out but it seems likely to me that starting with a good bill is less exploding-cigar prone than starting with a chaotic expediency that accepts, as a starting condition, that all expansions of US healthcare availability and coverage going forward should be built on the framework of for-profit insurance.

And at this point even most supporters here probably agree that the Senate is not striving for the best bill or even a sensible bill. Little thought is being given to the world beyond the next election cycle, or even the next news cycle.

So I remain torn.