depth first search

This whole process has been covered in great detail elsewhere, and beyond microblogging on Twitter just to combine my voice with the masses in support of reform efforts, I don’t have anything else to add. I will say that the MVPs for the whole process should probably go to Senator John Kerry (for figuring out how to pay for the whole thing) and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (for rescuing the entire package from oblivion).

This bill puts a better structure in place for people on the individual market, and does away with many of the more egregious systemic problems with health insurance while reducing the long term deficit. That said, there’s more room for improvement in the future. I hope congress finds the will to revisit this issue again.

Aside: The best arguments against the bill seem to come from single payer proponents, not the conservative right. I don’t think that’s just my sensibilities either. There’s something about Republican talking points these days that tends to veer towards the abstract. This is, I think, deeply unfortunate. There is a lot of free market expertise out there that could have made the bill even better (the basic framework is fundamentally conservative in design, having originated with the Heritage foundation I think, sometime during the mid-Permian period of health care reform, i.e. 1994). Sort of a shame that we have to argue with fringe types instead.

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