If you’re a liberal or progressive or whatever, chances are you fall into one of two camps today when it comes to health care reform. Either you’re in this camp (with Ezra Klein):
It’s difficult to conclude that these things slip backwards rather than marching forwards. The $900 billion for people who need help, the regulations on insurers and the exchanges that will force them to compete, the structure that will make health care nearly universal and the trends that suggest more people – and more politically powerful people – will be entering the new system as employer-based health care erodes – it all makes this look even more like the sort of program that will take root and be made better, as opposed to the sort of common opportunity people should feel comfortable rejecting. It doesn’t feel like that now. But then, it rarely does. Or you’re in this camp (with Howard Dean):
If I were a senator, I would not vote for the current health-care bill. Any measure that expands private insurers’ monopoly over health care and transfers millions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations is not real health-care reform. Real reform would insert competition into insurance markets, force insurers to cut unnecessary administrative expenses and spend health-care dollars caring for people. Real reform would significantly lower costs, improve the delivery of health care and give all Americans a meaningful choice of coverage. The current Senate bill accomplishes none of these. Nate Silver has 20 questions for people in Howard Dean’s camp. Update: Nate Silver offers his elevator pitch for health care reform.