OBAMA: Well, I think it should be a right for every American. In a country as wealthy as ours, for us to have people who are going bankrupt because they can't pay their medical bills -- for my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they're saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don't have to pay her treatment, there's something fundamentally wrong about that.[emphasis supplied]

I mean it's not the worst idea in the world, it could be very good actually, but it's certainly a reflection of how weak the arguments for universal healthcare have been since the campaign, and how the moral aspect was pretty much ignored.  

The whole frickin point of mandates is that everyone should have healthcare, because that's what is good for them.  Even if you don't think it's good for you, you have to have it because guess what, it is.  I think this compromise punts on the essence of what universal healthcare is all about and the unique opportunity provided to the federal government during this election cycle.

It's nothing new that Southerners are unable to vote their self-interest.  They will no doubt find themselves impeccable moral examples to the world for paying out the nose for private insurance and letting the poor and particularly non-white poor rot because "they don't work hard enough."

Beginning in 2014, states would receive higher federal reimbursement for CHIP beneficiaries, increasing from an average of 70 percent to 93 percent. CBO estimates that state spending on Medicaid would increase by about $33 billion over the 2010-2019 period as a result of the specifications affecting coverage.