If your biggest worry is about Harry Reid actually doing something, I'd say that you have a very trouble-free life.

January 2011 can't come fast enough. Hopefully Grassley, Baucus and Reid will all matter a lot less at that point.

The GOP plan is to exploit the different factions under the Dem's big tent to pull the agenda as close to the center as possible.

This is so disheartening...you have to wonder who is driving the bus here and are we heading for a brick wall with this kind of bullshit.

1. There is no such thing as health care reform that does not go through the Senate Finance Committee. Senate Health Education and labor also has jurisdiction but

2. No bill that does not have the support of a majority of the people's representatives can pass. Medicare-for-all whatever its merits doesn't have that support yet.

3. You might want to read Baucus' white paper. It's a pretty intelligent reading of the problem here. Let's just say he has listened to a lot of the right people. The main problem is cost growth and the massively innefficient delivery of care. There are many useful things that can be done.

http://finance.senate.gov/healthreform2009/home.html

I'm one of those who's worried about the size of Obama's proposed budget, but it isn't the cost of health care that worries me, so long as it's done right. Personally, I think voluntary single payer is the only way to go because it is fiscally efficient. The Medicare drug plan has been a horrible mess. It's terribly complex and confusing to it's users and it's inefficient and overly-costly, so I certainly hope we don't use that as a model. As a matter of fact, that's one of the things that needs to be fixed.

As for whether we can afford to do a health care plan right now,what's the big deal? We're already paying for it one way or another, even if it isn't through taxes. We're trading off lower wages for health care benefits. We pay for those who have no coverage when they receive care at hospitals, one way or another. The hospitals don't eat those costs, they pass them to government entities or they pass along the costs in the form of higher fees to those who can afford to pay, such as through higher fees to insurance companies. It would be nice if the plan could be creatively designed to reduce the horrendous costs of workers comp, for instance.

We wouldn't even need to start out with the deluxe model. Give us a very basic plan that we pay for, but that doesn't cost an arm and a leg, and let us buy amendments to the basic plan from insurance companies if we want deluxe, so we could at least get it off the ground to see how it works. This is the time to do it.