More Thoughts on Health Care Reform

I've been thinking about health care reform for a long time, but last night, when I mentioned that the bill had passed, my roommate asked a pertinent question - so, what's in the bill? I mumbled something about preexisting conditions, and then quickly looked it up. This was followed by a CNN report today that said, essentially, now that the bill is passed, what's in it?

This lead me to think more and more about the paradox of polling for health care reform - the words "health care reform bill" poll, at best, around 50-50. But if you take the individual components of the bill, each polls highly. Furthermore, if you talk to tea partiers about the bill, they describe a bill that simply does not exist - a huge government takeover of health care, replete with death panels.

So here's what I think is going on - the Progressives were disgusted with that health care reform didn't go far enough, Centrists hated the process by which health care reform was passed, and Conservatives hate the very idea of health care reform. And so long as the words "heath care reform" are used, the process overwhelmed the policy.