I'm gonna use the word liberal here, just to contain the parameters of my point. Let's forget all subspecies for a moment.
This current rift over the Senate Health Care bill has made me discover something I never realized before. There are two distinct genuses of liberal. Of course there are as many varieties as there are liberals, but this particular fault line had never existed to me until now.
See, without some element of a government plan - single payer, a seedling public option, i.e. a version of non-profit group bargaining health care - then there is no reform in my eyes.
To many it is the number of people covered, by hell or high water, that constitutes success.
I always assumed that the differences in a lot of conversations were more semantics than philosophy, but I'm realizing that there really is a bleeding-heart liberal and a libertarian liberal.
I don't want to cover people just to cover them while feeding a corrupt insurance system. Justifying tea-bagger claims of a welfare state by putting working, middle-class people into a line so they can get a subsidy to pay for the sickness profiteers. i want - and only want: there is no quid pro quo number that can be insured the wrong way - a sane, humane dignified system that operates on the overt and obvious truth that profit from sickness is immoral. I don't believe in big government anymore than the Republicans say they don't. I want smart government, and I believe it would sell itself well if it could occur.
I'm practical, though. I know it might have to begin with a toothless public option. i'm prepared to work years to improve it.
But no Public Option=No Reform, and that's just calling a toad a toad. it's not irrational.