So I don't want to talk about which health care plan has the best chance of passing, and I don't want to argue about which plan challenges us to come together as a society and provide health care for all of us the way every other developed nation does.

Um, okay. You wanna know something? I want the government to pass legislation that would give me a new car every two years. A big one. With flames on the sides. But I don't want to talk about the chance of that legislation passing. Nope, don't want to hear it. I just want that super awesome big car. In fact, I feel as though that's a moral imperative.

I truly believe what I wrote above. And because I believe it, I know that I would never make a good politician, because politicians actually do need to consider the chance of their legislation passing.

Now, where are my Birkenstocks and my Kool-Aid?

"...He proposes to make health insurance so affordable that every rational person will want to buy it. That's a neat argument if you live in the abstract world of University of Chicago economics. But that's not the real world..."

Sorry, but again, this is as wrong-headed as it gets. In the "real world" insurance is based upon diffusion of liability. i.e., the more people who buy into a plan, the less the premiums. It presupposes that the vast majority of persons who are hail and healthy will subsidize the young, elderly and infirm. That's how it works. And, yes, the more policies you sell, the lower premiums become, and consequently more persons buy into the discounted policies, and, that liability is spread around to a greater number of people at a lower price. That's not the U, that's a highly successful model of operation. How on earth do you think that discount insurers like Progressive and Geico make auto premiums lower?

Immoral, dude? Really? I think you're reaching here.

The truth is that both of these candidates have calculated health care positions that are short of universal health care. You might not want to talk about it because it deflates your argument, but it's true. Both plans expand the current Congressional health care and Medicare plans in an attempt to provide access to coverage for everyone. The only real difference, aside from this issue of a 'mandate' are the precise levels of subsidies and income brackets and the fact is that no one, not from the University of Chicago or Princeton for that matter, really know how this stuff will land.

As for the mandate, there are a couple of problems which are best understood by looking at why we're even talking about mandates. Hillary Clinton has judged that by hedging short of true universal care and instead talking about mandated coverage she can avoid using that most dreaded of words: tax (though I suspect that will be little more helpful to her in a general election than it's been in the primary.) But let's consider her proposal honestly. The question must be asked, how will this mandate be enforced? She really hasn't spelled this out. Perhaps she's wise to avoid explaining how she will accomplish this since, as Obama pointed out during the debate in Texas, there are already problems with this system in Massachusetts (see http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/us/politics/25mass.html?_r=1&oref=login .)

In a nutshell, Hillary calculates that she can avoid the tax trap by softening the plan and talking about mandates instead single payer systems and taxes. It's her judgment on the issue. The same can be said for Obama, but calling him immoral because he sees the path to health care differently is just crass and it's as foolish as calling Obama naive.

Billy, I personally watched the debate where she specifically stated she would consider wage garnishments or large fines to enforce he mandate.

A low income mother would rather be fined?

I don't think they get it, Billy Glad...Maybe they can't. Yes, yes Hillary gets it, too.

I'm a single mother of 1. You bet I get it. My kid has braces. I had a two teeth extracted a few months ago, because I'd much rather she had a pretty smile going forward, than I care about what happens to mine.

That's just how it is.

In your call for immorality you miss something, something rather central, and seem to be under the impression that her plan will be more affordable. If the money is taken from payroll, or from the bank account, the money is still lost to the mother. Under your theory, what if the mother couldn't afford it, and Hillary's plan took the food or rent or power money out of the families pockets. Remember, every family of four making $34,000 a year is not the same.

Your callous use of the well-off individual playing the system is just as amoral.

She's overestimating the savings, not talking about who gets how much subsidy and when, she hasn't mentioned the mechanism for enforcement, and she's underestimating the costs in tax-payer money, and she's completely ignored what's happened in Mass, where it only covered 80% of the previously uninsured.

And the only thing that's better about Obama's plan is that people aren't saddled with it until he can prove costs can go down.

Finally, her plan is not social security. Social Security is at it's most basic a simple re-distribution of wealth. We pay taxes, those dollars go to the elderly.

Medicare has some points that are exactly the same.

If she wants to take the insurance companies out entirely, that would be closer to medicare, but then that would be... single-payer, which she seems to denounce.

Now, why don't we now start a thread about her horrendous mortgage plan, freezing rates? Is she insane?