well, if these small entrepreneurs would just sell their souls to a big rich corporations all their problems would go away -- just like that...

these 'sharp' people just dont get it: we live in a time when you are either part of the big machine or you are gettin ground up into dust. that's all there is.

While I deem it essential that reform occur, the time lag for any bill won't address the dire need right now for 10s of millions of Americans.

What if a nation-wide movement towards low-cost insurance rose up out of the ashes of the political debate?

What if some wealthy friends chipped in to a pool and started a multi-billion dollar insurance safety net for us all?

The success of such an effort would be that anyone
who does not have health insurance could buy in for say, $25.00/month per person.

Essentially a health care co-op. Obviously such a beast would have to be accepted by the medical providers.

This wouldn't be a handout, it wouldn't be socialism, it would simply be a low-cost people's plan.

The administration of such a plan would have to be managed by the people, for the people, without violating any current laws.

Such a plan could also help those in transition between jobs. Better yet, small businesses could also shelve their current plans and buy into it for their own employees.

I'm not talking about comprehensive coverage, just basic catastrophic safety-net variety. At least it would mitigate some of the financial pain to millions.

Any takers?

Without a robust Public Options the problems sited by Obama will only grow worse. Insurance will be mandated, premiums will go up and yet more people will lose what coverage they have as a result of that rise in cost. The problems faced by small businesses will in no way be addressed. what are these people thinking of-Obama and the Blue Dogs ?

Without a robust Public Options the problems sited by Obama will only grow worse. Insurance will be mandated...

Insurance will be mandated regardless. The difference is solely whether you'll be able to make the mandated purchase of a policy from a public entity or not. In all probability, you won't, even if a robust public option is included.

The public option is well on the way to becoming a shibboleth.

I could be making three times my current salary by freelancing, but I've had cancer on and off for 35 years. I'm currently healthy and cancer-free, but there's not an insurance company in the country that will even talk to me. My job, which is a bit of a dead-end, is all that keeps me in the system.

It would seem that small business owners might want to form co-ops and directly purchase primary care physician practices for the care of their employees and dependents. "Concierge" care sponsored by employers would make good sense to increase productivity via healthier, at-work employees, could influence providers to beaccessible when employees are not at work (eves, weekends, holidays, etc.) and could reduce administrative costs and overhead by directly contracting or purchasing primary care provider practices or percentages of practice time.

The providers wouldn't have to wrestle with multiple insurers' claims processes (and the denials/appeals nightmare processes), care would be local to the businesses and most of the employees (assuming not large numbers of long distance commutes or telecommuting employees), and employers would have a vested interest in assuring the health and wellbeing of employees.

Something's got to give because healthcare reformis no such thing as it stands in Washington, small businesses are caught between a rock and a hard place, and incentives for start-ups in the US just aren't cutting it.

Well if nothing else the health insurance legislation should give the CEOs larger bonuses and help rise their stock prices. They might actually need to hire a few more people to handle the additional workload of scamming, I mean insuring, the 30 million or so people that Congress so generously provides them.

More people to provide industry profits. Actual affordable health care for people. Not so much.

I wish he would explicitly attack the opposing argument as "ridiculous," "absurd" or "dead wrong." Identify it -- here, that opponents are claiming heathcare reform will punish small business -- say that the argument is completely wrongheaded, and then make the positive argument about how it is needed by small businesses. Not expressly engaging the opposition argument makes it sound like they are talking past each other. Eventually, he will win the argument, but it would go a lot faster with direct confrontation.

Moreover, Obama is completely missing the most powerful economic argument of all. A good economy requires confidence among workers, consumers and investors. Confidence has eroded badly as the "Great Risk Shift" has escalated since 2000 -- never coming close to matching the level of confidence of the Clinton era despite official unemployment rates at the 4.4 per cent level. More and more people losing health insurance or pensions has acted like a hard ceiling on how much belief in their future people are willing to commit to.

Our country will never achieve a healthy level of confidence in the future until fear of financial devastation from a health problem is eliminated -- whether that's among the currently uninsured, who experience that fear most critically, but also those covered now through an employer while knowing they could unexpectedly lose that coverage. That's not all that's needed -- job growth in and of itself is the most important at this point -- but it is a necessary pre-condition to economic growth reaching its full potential.

I think the American people instinctively understand that argument as well. Confidence is not some statistical "lagging indicator." It's the end-all and be-all of a humming economy.

The standard GOP talking points against reform insist that changing the system would punish small businesses. -- Steve Benen

GOP's understanding of what constitutes a "small business" is not, necessarily, the same as yours an mine.

I'm reminded of John McCain defining "middle class" as those whose income is $5M and below; he's probably never even heard of people subsisting on $20-25K for a family of 3, which is what I see weekly, at "my" Free Clinic. The same "misapprehension" about the term "small" gets dragged out, regularly, when inheritance taxes or agribusiness ("small farms") are being discussed by our high an' mighty politicians. Obama, who at one time used to ride in a car with a hole in the floor still remembers it and understands the term "small" as it's understood by the hoi-polloi.