This article about lawmakers worried about 2010 repeats a meme whose popularity has really started to bother me:

Their political fortunes next year are likely to hinge on whether the U.S. economy, in its longest and deepest recession since the Great Depression, improves and if Congress passes a significant healthcare reform bill.

People keep talking about health care reform being Obama's Waterloo. It's not. It's his Heraclea, his Asculum, a potential Pyrrhic victory that might destroy his party. Americans are generally happy with their healthcare, and abhor gov't rationing and government mandates in a way Europeans and Japanese don't. Our cultural identity is built around individualism and liberty. That's why "reform" gets less popular they more people hear about specific proposals.

The latest offering, BaucusCare, isn't quite as egregious but offers a lot of the same problems:

Mandate Some penalty for employers who don't buy health insurance for low-wage workers Medicaid up to 133% of the poverty line Tax credits for buying insurance up to 300% of the poverty line Taxes on cadillac coverage that greatly exceeds the national average Guaranteed issue Something close to community rating

I'm shaking my head waiting for the collective "omg wtf" from Generation Y as they find out they're going to be required to pay for all this. They may never vote Democrat again.

Also, if you do something that includes both community rating and guaranteed issue, I think a very real and ugly constitutionality problem arises for mandates, because now you're explicitly forcing younger, healthier people to subsidize the rest. (And some people will just refuse to do it. Then what? Do we send in SWAT teams? Enforcement could be very sticky, offering many opportunities for state ugliness.)

What if the government required you to buy a pound of cheese every year? Would that be constitutional?

This is actually much worse. At least you'd have some hope of getting a fair value for your cheese-buying. This is like saying everyone has to pay $10 for the cheese, and older people will get 1.5 lbs and younger people .5 lbs.

The Waterloo meme may be helpful to Democratic ideologues who really really think socialism will work and to Republicans who are happy to pick up the pieces when an outraged public gets hit with the bill (and the baton), but it's bad for America.