The comment threads to diaries like this one are full of people raving, whining, and frantically repeating ridiculously wrong talking points like a bunch of teabaggers! The diaries themselves are scarcely any better, in some cases. Some of these people doubtless ARE teabaggers, over here sowing dissent among the left, but the two diaries I linked to above are longtime Kossacks who ought to know better. For God's sake, calm down and start thinking before you write!
All of the hysterical raving about how the eeevul monopoly health insurers are going to force us to pay jacked-up premiums is just bullshit! Ezra Klein is a genuine progressive wonk who has read the bill, and followed its development. Here's what he says:
Under health-care reform, there are at least three bulwarks against the monopoly-profits scenario: Inter-insurer competition, regulators, and the tax on excessive premiums. Two of these mechanisms don't exist in the current market. One -- the market itself -- is much weaker and more opaque, and individuals have a far harder time navigating it.
Bottom line -- under this legislation, premiums will be subject to more control due to regulation, and market competition, not less.
As for the screeching hysterics about the mandate -- "omigod, teh big bad gummint gonna trow me in jail if I don't buy their sucky eevul corp-rat insurance" -- its a stupid lie! What will really happen is that if you don't have insurance, you wind up paying more on your taxes at the end of the year. In 2014, its a whole $95. Per year. That goes up to $350 in 2015 and $750 in 2016 and later. Read the bill (BIG PDF - see page 326 for the penalty language.) Think of it as an emergency room user's charge.
You didn't get everything you wanted in the bill, and you're pissed -- fine, I am too. But its stupid and hysterical to blame Obama because he couldn't make Joe Lieberman a decent person, or keep Ben Nelson from being a preening showboater. The choices we have now are:
1. Kill the bill, which will kill any further progress on health care for a decade, and probably hand control of Congress over to the raving nutcases and evil liars in the Republican Party; or
2. Take what we can get this time, pass the bill, and then go back next month to push for a strong public option under reconciliation. And then make the 2010 elections a referendum on Medicare Buyin for everybody who wants it.
The first approach means catastrophe not just for America, but for the planet (try getting a climate bill through the loony Beck-worshippers who will control Congress if the Democrats lose). The second approach means we have a partial success immediately, we have a chance to build on that success, and we have a strong issue to run on so we can elect more and better Democrats in 2010 and 2012. I know which one sounds better to me!
(This started as a comment, but grew big enough that I thought it should be a diary -- only my second one on Daily Kos)