You may be right, and in fact I think you are, but allow me to play devil’s advocate.

With Massachusetts as a proxy, we have evidence that an ‘all private’ form of universal coverage will indeed be effective at enrolling a very high percentage of the population, but will do very little to reign in cost. Abandonment of the public plan choice option has a major obstacle in the form of the congressional budget office. Should the provision be compromised away, the likelihood is that the bill won’t be passable based on cost projections / fundability.

Should it still go through as you suggest it may, it will be to accomplish widespread enrollment first, and reform down the road (like has occurred in MA, where some of the recently proposed reforms have some promise). That is a scary path to follow, but often that of least political resistance.

What I’d like to see is legislation (and a PR campaign) that makes the cost of healthcare more visible to us consumers, like having the non-taxable benefit detailed on a W2 for example (like a 401k contribution is). We need / have needed a 2 year high profile national discussion prior to attempting to push legislation through. There is irony in that the poor visibility of healthcare costs to the public, is what is making the need for reform so very hard to communicate, and is due to past ‘path of least resistance’ political decisions (largely made by Democrats).

Ralph