"We warned the president -- don't ever, ever agree with the Republicans,"

[MadHound]

52. The trouble is this interim step,

This individual mandate. As it stands, it gives the insurance industry a mandated monopoly. It forces citizens, simply as a condition of being alive, to purchase a product, whether they need it, want it, or not, from a for profit corporation. That is a really huge, nasty legal precedent to set.

Furthermore, do you really think that, once the insurance industry gets this mandated monopoly, they will willingly give it up? This interim step will take decades to overcome, if we ever can. Not to mention the fact that once big legislation such as this is passed, inertia takes over and the issue won't be revisited for years and decades.

Better that we have this big bust now, for such a bust will once again create a crisis atmosphere and create a drive towards getting single payer UHC quicker.