Come on in. There's enough room for everybody?
Words. For Your Consideration...
"To achieve the goals of health-care reform -- universal coverage and reducing costs -- is it really necessary to overhaul our entire health-care system? The answer is probably yes. No one would design anything like our current system if he or she were starting from scratch. Why try to renovate this ancient mess of leaky pipes and rotting wood? Why not tear it down and replace it with something shiny and new?
...people, even liberals, are starting to get unnerved by the cost of all this. We now talk of trillions the way, even a few months ago, we spoke of billions. In mid-June, the Senate health committee put out its version of reform and was horrified when the Congressional Budget Office figured that it would cost a trillion dollars over 10 years (over current spending) and would still leave millions uninsured. The committee retreated to its lair and re-emerged in early July with a revised plan "scored" by the CBO as costing only $600 billion and leaving only 3 percent of the population uninsured. Six hundred billion doesn't sound like all that much to achieve, or come close to achieving, an important and long-standing goal such as universal health care. But keep in mind that health-care reform is supposed to save money. Its premise is that the current path is unaffordable. In that sense, a "mere" $600 billion extra is total defeat.
Why doesn't the president give himself a well-deserved treat and slow down a bit on health-care reform? Instead of going for a total overhaul, go for some smaller successes, or what business executives and gorillas call the "low-hanging fruit"? Pick half a dozen, get Congress to swallow them and see where we stand?"
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