Howard Dean on health reform via Americablog. Dean was willing to go with the Medicare expansion. After all, that would be a public option too. But with any competition eliminated and a mandate to buy insurance written in, what have we got left?

Massachusetts has mandatory insurance, but it’s very costly for the state and wouldn’t work nationally.

I just had a fender bender. It made me reflect on car insurance vs health insurance.

Why is car insurance so expensive? Bodily harm. If it were only a matter of insuring a replacement car there would be no need for that much coverage. The first thing you think is, thank God no one got hurt.

Even car insurance has the high risk pool, expensive but available. Privatization is fine for property. With health insurance we’re talking about lives.

It’s not insurance we need, really, it is access. That can be done with a government program like Medicare, or through regulated non-profit insurance companies with a single payer, like in France. No one is excluded, sick people are not charged more.

I lived without a car for five years when I was working for minimum wage. I also lived without insurance, but I don’t recommend it. If we are all included in the risk pool, the young and healthy can worry about other things. If, God forbid, they get in a car accident, they won’t be financially ruined. They won’t have to worry about their parents either.

Being from an older generation, I’m very grateful that my parents can see a doctor, and won’t sit at home with symptoms for fear of imposing on their children. We take so much for granted when it works right.

For the most part, things are working right for most of us. Most of us are insured, most of us are employed. A triage process is going on, and much of America is being cut off to save the system as it is. I am afraid of what we are becoming.

Why is Lieberman doing it? Daily Kos has a variety of editorial links.