We're not changing our health-care system very much at all, in fact.
Nothing happens in 2010. Or in 2011. Or in 2012. In 2014, when the bill really begins, the insurance situations of 18 million people change. A full 16 million of those people are uninsured. Aside from the small sliver of people who will pay a surtax on the final few dollars of uncommonly expensive insurance plans, the country simply will not notice this legislation.
We're reforming the margins of the health-care system.
As Big Tent Democrat says: "Put THAT on the teleprompter."
My disappointment with so-called "healthcare reform" is profound and Ezra Klein's post at the WP does the best job of laying out why. There's not much there. No public option. No real reform for five years. A so-called mandate with no penalties and a seemingly optional agreement with the health insurance industry - whose stocks are soaring to half-century highs on the news of this mess.
Some will call it "historic." They will be wrong.
