Originally Posted by Griff

The problem to be solved was covering people who could not afford coverage. Forcing people to buy coverage with money they don't have doesn't really address that. They should have gone for a full-blown single-payer system financed through a national sales tax. As it is the system will get a lot worse and the Dems will lose power before the government option can be grown into a useful replacement. This plays into the GOP's core value of forcing people to pay connected private industry for services they don't think they need. Health care should be either an actual free market or a government program as all half measures will be more expensive, more coercive, and less useful than either alone.