Well personally I think the bills both suck! They will not bring costs down or create any real competition so they are not worth the mandate they contain. If they are going to remain this weak, I see no point in accepting a mandate. We will not be getting enough in return.

I think leadership has been dismal on health care reform even though White House staff has claimed that their strategy has worked, I don't see that.

Frankly when it came to giving a big handout to Wall Street there was little resistance. Republican resistance was more for show than anything else in my perception. Democrats jumped to it in throwing money at the problem without a plan pretty quickly. Can't say that was very intelligent of them.

Health care has been a battle for all sorts of entrenched political, control, and financial reasons.

And... yes in my experience a huge percentage of our country is on drugs. I myself at most take a tylenol a few times a year. But for trivia sake at least half of the country is on at least one prescription drug:
http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/healthcare/a/usmedicated.htm

The only times polls really matter is right before the election. Maybe that is what we will get, a victory right before the mid-term elections to boost the Dems. A lot can happen between now and then, but you're right, Sync. Letting the Right achieve anything just makes it harder to recover something later. They should be going for the kill. They could have a lasting majority if they worked for the voters who might remain active in these elections if they thought it meant something. But if nothing gets done then I think they will resume their apathy. What's the point? They elected Obama and he didn't get it done. A sad statement about their lack of contributions to the efforts post-election, but their perception nonetheless.

The problem isn't drugs. The problem is that the Democrats do not have the courage to do what is right by the people of this country. They try to obfuscate their own pussilanimity by claiming that it wouldn't be possible to do the right thing. They pray that once again the people will swallow that garbage. So, instead of doing the right thing by they people, they are attempting to fashion a bill that pleases the most parasitical of the special interests involved in and profiting from the current rotten system we have: big insurance and big pharma especially. As is the usual method of bamboozling the public, the Democrats will try to sell the public on the idea that the crappy special interest legislation they've produced is "the best we could do under the circumstances." That is the excuse of liars and weaklings and all too typical of our cowardly, craven, corrupt DC Democrats up and down the line from Capitol Hill to the White House.

In defense of incrementalism and the imperfect plans being drafted by Congress, there's Krugman:

Now, the moment of truth isn’t here quite yet: There’s enough wrong with the Baucus proposal as it stands to make it unworkable and unacceptable. But that said, Senator Baucus’s mark is better than many of us expected. If it serves as a basis for negotiation, and the result of those negotiations is a plan that’s stronger, not weaker, reformers are going to have to make some hard choices about the degree of disappointment they’re willing to live with.

Of course, those who insist that we must have a single-payer system — Medicare for all — won’t accept any plan that tries, instead, to cajole and coerce private health insurers into covering everyone. But while many reformers, myself included, would prefer a single-payer system if we were starting from scratch, international experience shows that it’s not the only way to go. Several European countries, including Switzerland and the Netherlands, have managed to achieve universal coverage with a mainly private insurance system.

And right here in America, we have the example of the Massachusetts health reform, many of whose features are echoed in the Baucus plan. The Massachusetts system, introduced three years ago, has many problems. But as a new report from the Urban Institute puts it, it “has accomplished much of what it set out to do: Nearly all adults in the state have health insurance.” If we could accomplish the same thing for the nation as a whole, even with a less than ideal plan, it would be a vast improvement over what we have now.

Since this was written, the Senate draft has improved and the House has passed something even more progressive - although the Stupak grit needs to be excised from the saussage.

Politics is the art of the possible, but in this political blog, this seems to always be overlooked. If a few marginal improvements are within our reach, and Paul Krugman is one of those who believe this to be the case with what is on the table, it makes little sense to throw the baby out with the bathwater.