What concerns me is twofold, the predilection of liberal democrats to caricature their opposition, often as a way of engaging with more easily demolished argument and sidestepping a more difficult one- a sort of political Manstein plan. Hence my original, sarcastic comment. Don’t get me wrong, conservative republicans do it to, I just think it’s a more relevant criticism of the party in control of government.

My second concern is the unbelievably large distance between the quality and number of government services demanded by America’s citizenry and the same’s willingness to pay for them. Even if we were willing to pay more, there are, in fact, hard limits to our ability to pay and as such our problem is every bit as cultural as it is fiscal.

Yet both of my concerns fall by the wayside because I’m either a horrible, disingenuous human being with double standards and – god forbid -bias or a low tax, anti-government zealot. I am, for the record, neither.

The discussion about a public option is one of the screwed up ( in a non-partisan manner) parts of this debate. There has been so much energy focused on the public option that I would guess for many people they believe it is the biggest and most important part of the whole deal when it isn’t. Our national debates tend to focus on just one part of a big issue, which leads to impoverished , shallow debates.

In reference to the original topic of this post and also a comment I made to Sam. When whatever gets passed and people find out there will be no more pre-existing conditions penalties and that almost everybody will be able to get insurance and there will be subsidies for the people who can’t afford it and other insurance reforms and that there is no totalitarian hellhole sub paragraph in the bill it will be popular, most likely very popular

Re: tort reform: this is not only a debate but a negation. Obama has tried to get R buy in which has failed. It is nice to say he should have put it in there in the first place, but the fact remains people will still be screaming socialism/Nazism. In a negation people often do hold a few chips back to try and get some agreement or support.

2.) The public option that is, “necessary, to keep the control costs and keep the health insurance racket honest,” apparently because it will be large enough to be a force to be reckoned with. Right? Well the CBO estimate places it at 6 million individuals by 2019. Which is less than 1/7th the number of enrollees in Medicare. So what exactly is the less potent public option going to have or be able to do about costs that Medicare hasn’t? Two can play the what CBO says amounts to a relatively small portion of reform game.

Gregniak, you’re smart enough to know that how many votes a particular reform will gather is far, far less relevant/important than whether the reform itself is a good idea. Not to mention, if Republicans aren’t going to vote, doesn’t that mean Democrats have a free hand to write tort reform that accomplishes exactly what you detailed? Oh wait, that’s exactly what that means.

The bigger – answerable question here is why D’s didn’t consider this an option at all until the alter of bipartisanship demanded a sacrifice. The answer, trial lawyers, who were one of any number of special interest groups that either supported or still support health care reform because it does absolutely nothing but ensure they’ll continue to make money, if not make more (see Pharma).

Which isn’t to hijack the thread to debate healthcare reform but to highlight how disingenuous Liberal Democrats are in discussing their opposition.

Plan A.) Cast them all as some combination of heartless, quasi-racist, pro-big business, and complete idiots. Focus on the fringe that supports such statements.

Plan B.) While casting aspersions the whole time, point out how inadequate or relatively minor opposition ideas are. At the same time, ignore comparably unimpressive positions in your own solutions and fail to recognize that each suggestion/solution is meant to be part of the solution and not one in and of itself.

This may be a model good enough to earn Keith Olbermann $30 million over four years but it doesn’t strike me as a good approach to anything other than entertainment or umbrage stoking

I figure any NCR would end up having to use something cliche because really there aren’t that many.

My sarcasm sensor is not working tonight, Kyle. But, you were joking about tort reform as not being cliche, right?