OK, your theory makes some sense, Blue N. But my response is that HR 3200 doesn't include, and thus can't accomplish, your first step. I haven't read all 1,018 pages of the bill, but the summaries claim it includes a public option. That is the first step. LINK I am not sure why you think HR 3200 won't accomplish this first step.

This is something that I've never understood, Blue Neponset. If your goal is to eventually decouple health insurance from employment, how is it a good first step to strengthen that link? The first step IMHO, is to get some sort of public option for small business. Once that is in place we can add the self-employed to that plan. Once the self-employed are covered then we can work in some kind of tax credit so people can buy in to the public plan on an individual basis. Once that happens employers will encourage their employees to buy into the public plan. After a period of time, viola! health insurance is decoupled from employment. At that point, we can get rid of the tax credit and fund the plan via normal income taxes. Right now the market doesn't do a good job of offering individual health care polices. They are very expensive and very limited. I don't think that is going to change. Also, thanks for offering a reasonable opinion about this. I don't agree with you but I appreciate your honest argument on this topic.

The perfect is the enemy of the good. Decoupling health care insurance from employment is a fundamental change to our health care system. If you are holding out for this fundamental change then you are ignoring reality. Incremental change is how our health care system will get better. The house bill is a step in the right direction. It isn't the final destination.

It's been five months since the stimulus bill became law. Did they redefine short term since I graduated college. It used to be a year. How long would your payroll tax cut plan have taken to fix the economy? Five weeks? Is it too late to do it now? My neighbor can't sell her house. If payroll tax cuts can change that then let's do it. Maybe you should get some new leadership for your party. If they had a silver bullet to fix the economy why didn't they get it included in the bill? They failed us all. At least you guys can blame the Democrats. So it isn't all bad.

Erick is a polemicist, and he isn't very good at it. That is why he has to resort to this kind of language. A good polemicist would have left himself a little wiggle room by using a more amorphous claim. Erick went all in by being specific about how "Leftists" celebrate soldiers' deaths. He should have said Leftists celebrate bad news from Iraq, and then intimated that Leftists were celebrating soldiers' deaths. That would have given him some plausible deniability while also giving the wingnuts the hate speech they crave. If I thought I could make some money at it I would teach a polemics class to wingnut bloggers. Most of the suck at it.

Ed Whelan is a petty man.