From the AP, via Breitbart:

After months spent criticizing Democrats’ health overhaul plans, House Republicans have produced a draft proposal of their own. It’s much shorter and focuses on bringing down costs rather than extending coverage to nearly all Americans.

A 230-page draft was obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press. A spokeswoman for Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said changes were still being made before the bill would be finalized in time to offer as an alternative when Democrats begin floor debate on their bill, possibly at the end of this week.

I still don’t think there’s anything wrong with “Party of No.” But for now I’ll take 88% smaller.

Selected bullet points from the Organizing for America website:

The President’s plan:

Ends discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions.

That sounds good.  People certainly shouldn’t be denied access to healthcare for being sick.  But…this does increase costs to the insurance industry.

Limits premium discrimination based on gender and age.

Discrimination…always bad, right?  Although adjusting premiums based on risk levels is how insurance companies operate at a profit, and this would take that away.  Oh well…profits are evil anyways.

Caps out-of-pocket expenses so people don’t go broke when they get sick.

No one should have to declare bankruptcy just because they got sick and had some medical bills.  But if we cap expenses to the people, we also cap revenues to the insurance companies.

Won’t add a dime to the deficit and is paid for upfront.

Whew!  I was really starting to get worried about the deficit.

Offers a public health insurance option to provide the uninsured and those who can’t find affordable coverage with a real choice.

“The public option”:  sounds like a sturdy, earnest safety net for hardworking Americans.  There’s no way it could ever become a monolithic government money pit, right?  Medicare/Medicaid has ballooned up to about $700 billion a year with costs spiralling out of control – but I’m sure the “public option” would remain a fairly small, insignificant government expenditure…unless something happened like…the collapse of the health insurance industry?

Fortunately, there’s no way the health insurance industry could possibly collapse.  Unless, perhaps the government were to

1. Increase costs by mandating coverage
2. Remove the ability to adjust premiums based on risk levels
3. Cap revenues to the insurance companies

The arrogance of our politicians to think that they can micromanage the minutiae of a 15 trillion dollar economy, from healthcare expenses to car manufacturing, will only end in tragedy.  We have only to look so far as the grand communist experiment of the Soviet Union to understand this.  Learning from past experiences and applying that knowledge to future endeavors is a fairly fundamental human characteristic.  Why are we allowing our politicians to ignore logic and reason?

I am not even mad at Keith Olbermann anymore. I only feel sorry for him.

You see, Keith cannot tell the difference between neighbors and friends voluntarily helping each other and the government undertaking to help everybody.

Thus, an elected official who exhorts his constituents to help each other out but who opposes additional federal efforts to intervene in people’s lives and jobs is a massive hypocrite.

The debate doesn’t need to go any further. If his mind truly cannot process the profound moral and philosophical gulf that exists between those two acts, then it is senseless to argue with him. (Not that anybody has ever argued with him– I have never seen Keith Olbermann interact with anybody who disagrees with him.)

So leave the Sultan of Smug to belch self-satisfied snark to an ever-diminishing audience. Same goes for snickering 14-year old, Chris Hayes. (Although that is not to say I am done posting video mash-ups of the show.)