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Readers, we've got to get something straight. This has been irritating me for some time now, and my patience for it is no more.
You probably know there is legislation concerning the health care industry on the table in Washington right now.
You probably know it's been on that table for a long time and doesn't seem to be doing much in the way of going places.
Actually, there are several different pieces of legislation on several different tables; someday, perhaps on a day not so distant that most of us alive today no longer walk the earth, they will become one.
You might know this situation isn't unusual because our system for making legislation happen is dysfunctional by design, our founders not wishing any one person or body or state or group to wield undue influence over it.
You might also know health care reform was President Bill Clinton's first attempt at major legislation, and that it failed, and that by modern consensus, this failure proceeded to torpedo the Democrats' electoral ship in the 1994 midterms, turning control of Congress over to the GOP.
All of the above things are facts of a fairly simple and easy-to-understand variety. Now, let's move into murkier territory.
What do you actually know about the proposed health care legislation, as it stands now? My guess: not a lot. Maybe nothing.
That's no knock against you – the list of people who do understand it is probably limited to a few D.C. staffers who have been buried beneath its thousands of pages since last spring, and those loyal, underappreciated public servants at the Congressional Budget Office whose job is to do the math in a non-partisan way.
(Oh yes, my friends, post-modern partisanship is so pernicious that it can even seize control over the field of calculus).
Another guess: There might be one thing you think you know about health care reform, "Obamacare," or whatever you call it.
Maybe you like it, maybe you don't. But you probably think it is, at least in some way, a government takeover of health care.
Before I continue, I would ask you to note that due to Associated Press style guidelines, I cannot use exclamation points in my columns.
Therefore, please pretend, for my sake and yours, the following sentences are each punctuated by 25, maybe 26 exclamation points, with some other needless characters in the mix.
Obamacare is not a government takeover of health care. It is not the nationalization of the health care industry.
It's so far away from a government takeover that I believe the collective intelligence of the nation at large is reduced just a little bit every time someone calls it that.
Republicans, Tea Partiers, skeptics and other general contrarians: Please, for the sake of all things accurate and factual, stop calling the health care legislation "a government takeover of health care."
Let's take a look at the actual nature of this legislation.
The key, big-picture functions of the reform are the following:
Maintain the current system of multi-payer private insurance.
Impose uniform restrictions on private insurers' ability to rescind, cut or refuse to deliver services and payments.
Extend coverage to most of the approximately 30 million Americans who do not have it now, via mandates and subsidies for private health insurance.
Those are the three most basic and fundamental things that are going to happen with any version of this reform. There are many smaller-picture details to fight about and hash out, as there always are.
None of those things entail the federal government nationalizing, centralizing and seizing permanent control of your health care.
The people who would like you to believe that lie are using the Chewbacca defense – throwing about meaningless, irrelevant and false assertions to distract you from the real issues. It's important to recognize this.
To those of you guilty of propagating this rubbish: You might not like health care reform, you might oppose it, you might want to see it defeated and you might think that calling it a government takeover will aid you in that pursuit.
But you are doing a disservice to our national political rhetoric and discourse.
Let's talk about the real positives and negatives in this reform proposal – and it contains some degree of both. We won't get anywhere if we can't agree to talk to each other with some accuracy about this.
is a member of the 
8 comments
There are two bills that have passed. One passed by the House of Representatives that abolishes the multi-payer private insurance for single national coverage. One passed by the Senate that maintains the current system as you stated. Before the election in MA, the two bills were working through committees for reconciliation of the differences to be approved by each branch of congress. After the election in MA, the process was halted because of the change of make up of the Senate. So there is no clear decision on whether the reconciled bill would be a single national coverage or multi-payer.With regards to imposing uniform restrictions on private insurers' ability to rescind, cut or refuse to deliver services and payment. The senate bill does contain plans to regulate the multi-payer insurance industry. The house bill proposed to create bureaus to oversee the single-payer national health care plan. Again due to the outcome of the elections in MA the process to reconcile these differences was halted.Finally, "Extend coverage to most of the approximately 30 million American who do not have it now via mandates and subsidies for private health care". In an effort to understand the term mandate I checked out it definition in the Oxford American Dictionary and found it to mean "an official order or commission to do something" and ironically "a written authority enabling someone to carry out transactions on another's bank account". Again there were two versions of the bill; one for mandates (House) and one with the ability to opt out(Senate). And again, the reconciliation process has been halted. An important issue to state is that the process broke after the election in MA. To me, it shows that congress is unwilling to use the current congressional process to engage in real debate on this issue because of an assumed conclusion that the opposition will prevail in killing the legislation. Incidentally, even some of the support was not willing to give support until many fringe deals were made.Since the process is broken and there is no final bill it is irresponsible to claim that there is a planned government takeover of health care but it is as equally irresponsible to claim that there is not a planned takeover of health care. The fact is we just do not know.
Finally, rational thought