More fun with TIME:  Obama's Health-Care Challenge: Keeping the Focus on the Larger Goals, by Karen Tumulty.

An unnamed White House official was quoted as saying:

"There are those on the left who believe this would be the nose under the tent for single-payer. There are those on the right who suspect that this could be the nose under the tent for single-payer. The left and the right love to do that kind of minuet. I don't want to denigrate those views so much as to say that it is an unproductive sideshow to the major debate here."

THAT is why Americans are so upset about all this.  Single-payer, or a stepping stone to single-payer, or defacto single-payer when you add up the mandates and fines, is NOT what the U.S. wants or needs.  That IS the major issue, and as long as all the politicians keep discussing ways THEY can 'fix' things, and those fixes can get anywhere closer to single-payer, then the citizens of this country are going to be justifiably worried.  


I think the smart U.S. citizen from either side of the aisle (and the majority of us are within an arms length of the middle) knows that what is broken (cost of premiums, lack of portability, need for tort reform) could be greatly improved if not solved by free market solutions that wouldn't cost tax payers one dime in government spending or added bureaucracy: interstate competition, tax breaks for individuals, small business pooling, eliminate policy mandates, and tort reform.


Why won't Congress go that way?  One word: Power.