BUT the issue here is that Ezra is writing from some time in the future.  What bill is Ezra talking about?  There is no bill yet.  And how can this even be true?

It's better than anything the major Democrats proposed in the primary, much less anything that passed four committees in Congress.

Expansion of Medicaid?  Unless there is a federal subsidy, Medicaid is an unfunded mandate that is the responsibility of the states.  It's great to expand the program to cover more people, but where are the states getting the money?

Out-of-pocket caps?  Whether or not one goes bankrupt depends a good deal on whose pockets are being measured for the cap.  While one person may be able to manage with a cap as low as $5,000, for someone else, that is financial disaster.

No discrimination for pre-existing conditions?  Sounds great, but no one's talking about whether the insurance companies will be able to charge higher premiums for pre-existing conditions; if they can, for some people, it will still be unaffordable.

Subsidies?  Wonderful.  But why would we need them if everyone is going to be covered?  Why shouldn't premiums be able to come way down?  what's really happening is not that the insurance companies are lowering premiums, but that the government has made a  commitment to make sure the insurance companies get every dollar they want to charge.

Spending more money on care and less on premiums?  Ending the practice of rescission?  Why not sell us the Brooklyn Bridge while they're at it?  Who is going to make sure that more money - how much more, by the way? - gets spent on care?  

The issue, dear young Ezra, is not insurance, it's CARE.  C-A-R-E.  A little four-letter word that has gotten set aside while we discuss how the insurance companies can benefit from reform, but packaging it in a way that nakes it look like they are making the supreme sacrifice.  

We have more than enough apologists for the insurance industry; if Ezra really wanted to make a difference, he would put the focus where it belongs: on health CARE.  

New Splits

Think government Katrina-style health care. Or consider how we know that drug abuse is a medical problem, yet look how government treats that illness. Look how government used top DoJ go-to lawyers to craft impimaturs to "legitimize" torture and co-opted psychologists to concoct torture regimens upon its captives.

As if government doesn't already try to micro-manage people's lives right down to minutiae, once mandatory government "health care" is in place, the mass surveillance system will really kick in and ostensibly monitor for living habits, because "poor behavioral choices" will now have a direct cost upon society.

Consider the Georgia Guidestones. Of course they want eugenics. Eugenics is often subtle, even present age-of-consent laws past puberty are a form of eugenics. Medicine will be used for political ends and political control, whether prohibited by law, or not. Complete sexual histories will be compiled within medical histories and those will be used for shaming. Just look how J. Edgar Hoover targeted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, with FBI sexual spying information, in order to try and blackmail him into quitting the Civil Rights movement.

Who will government choose as guinea pigs for patent medicines by Big Pharma? How bad will abuses get with Big Pharmas's free ride impunity, that their lobbyists are said to have already purchased from our can-do congress? How will that impact on such alternatives as homeopathics, diet and/or medical marijuana? With government's black hole debt, will the US join other countries in the wholesale and dubius manner in which those countries already obtain, harvest and sell human organs?