Socialized Medicine By Another Path

Phil Kerpin reminds us that there is more than one way to socialized medicine.

Some money quotes: "The insurance companies will insist on, and probably receive, an individual health insurance mandate that will make it illegal not to buy their products. The penalty for violating the mandate will be a sizable new tax (2.5 percent of gross income in H.R. 3200), or garnishing your wages. "

"The left is desperately trying to keep the public option distraction alive. By acting as if it is still the major controversy in the bill, they hope to continue to draw fire away from the risk of a mandates and subsidies bill until they can announce a last minute, possibly bipartisan, so-called "compromise" that will catch free-market activists off-balance by removing the public option, and its slightly more subtle incarnation, the non-profit co-op"