They tell me Norway has no private health insurance, not because it's illegal, but because there's no market. Making it illegal for an American NOT to buy private health insurance is a far cry from universal healthcare. This doesn't provide care to anyone, it obligates them to provide it for themselves (per the traditional American bootstrap levitation. ) Families earning <$88k/year are eligible for government subsidies that may or may not cover the entire cost, but health insurance will still be private, and the rates will still be set by private insurance carriers.

That's a big problem, because the motive to healthcare reform for several decades has been that costs are rising at a double digit annual percentage (several times the rate elsewhere in the industrialized world) and because they've been doing so for so long existing costs are already exorbitant. Virtually nothing in this bill addresses its primary motivation. The only thing that comes close are insurance "exchanges" in each state, but all those do is (hopefully) remedy the common practice of state legislatures granting a given insurer a monopoly over the states residents. The OTHER bill the House passed, headed for a non-filibustered Senate vote in a few days, would require federal approval for large rate hikes, but apart from that there are no cost controls. None. Not one. But every adult in the country is still required to pay those costs. Again, to give an idea of how expensive that will be, the subsidies to families earning <$88k/year will cost taxpayers $900 BILLION. Another way to look at that is that the private insurers gorging on American illness just had $900 billion dropped in their laps by federal law. Plus whatever it costs people who don't have insurance now but also earn too much to qualify for a subsidy, and plus whatever it costs ABOVE the subsidy for those who do qualify.

Healthcare is rapidly reaching a point where it will consume Americas GDP, because everyone needs it and there's little to no government regulation to either guarantee minimal coverage or limit costs. That, not charity, is the real incentive to legislating reform. Unfortunately, this bill accomplishes next to nothing toward that goal, and may actually exacerbate the problem by ensuring over a trillion dollars in additional revenue for an already ravenous industry.