Ideologically, the Right has a problem with the idea of "forced charity." The Left, on the other hand, has statements like, "We're the richest nation in the world, how can we not [fill in the blank]," where you sub in either "feed the poor" or "provide health insurance to everybody."

If anything about the independence and freedom side of the Right appeals to me, it's the "don't force me to do things" kind of freedom. I'm not sure whether the actual size of the government is a concern, but rather the quantity and quality of the force that it's applying on its citizens. Isn't that the real concern with socialism. It's not socialism itself that's a problem, but rather the understood totalitarianism that has to come with it.

Removing the public option, therefore, seems ok. This is what the Obama Administration is now prepared to do. If Americans want to provide insurance to the poor, they can do so through charities. The new co-op idea should have bipartisan appeal because this is simply taking a core cost-saving aspect of the European healthcare systems and bringing it here.

Some European systems, like UK's NHS, provide universal health care which in turn provides them cost-savings by having a single-payer. But maybe the net effect is that universal coverage is more charity than cost-savings (the jury is still out on that).

So there is some aspect of the European way that is just patently unappealing to the Right, and that's the forced charity part. But there is a major aspect that should be appealing to both sides, and that's how they're able to spend one-third less of their GDP than we do on health care (our 15% vs. their 10%).

I think a reasonable compromise in all these "Big Government vs. free markets" debates is that we should use the government to put its finger on the scale, and only so. Use the government to tweak the markets and influence the market so that it maximizes positive outcomes most of the time. A totally free-wheeling market is anarchic and causes violent economic upswings.

On a lateral topic, is Obama helping healthcare reform? I think there's two points to make that he's not.

For one, I think he's deflating the liberals. I see a lot of articles pop up on my radar that mention this or that extreme case of insurance malpractice (new expression I coined), but I don't see the attendant grass roots campaign for the victims. There was Sicko that came out in 2007, but where's the equivalent angry mob supporting health care reform?

It seems like there was more liberal activism against Proposition 8 than there is supporting health care reform. Honestly most liberals don't understand health care reform (most conservatives don't either). Obama's leading the way, and so the supporters are just passively hoping The Professor knows what's best. If the Anointed One wasn't running the show, maybe we could see a regular grass roots street fight for health care reform.

Another point is that conservatives are conflating these healthcare reform protests with their lingering bitterness that Obama won the election. How can Obama become the bipartisan president if he doesn't have bipartisan appeal? I know he did well among some independents in some states, but damn if the conservatives don't hate this guy. They hate him more than they hated Clinton.

This is why some black Americans didn't want a black president, because they didn't want, as The Onion put it, to have a "Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job."

Anyway, I'll keep re-iterating this point: Healthcare reform should have happened in small, tangible chunks that just appeal to the common sense of both sides.