Here is a long email I wrote to my mother-in-law regarding my thoughts on health care reform.  I am for what campaign Obama said, when he talked about using a scalpel.  I think health care reform is best done slowly and deliberately to make a real change.

1. Putting caps on medical malpractice lawsuits.  Currently a person can sue a doctor for as much money as they want.  This sort of practice has caused the doctors to have to purchase incredibly expensive insurance which they then past the cost on to us.  As far as I can tell, no one is really against this piece, they just say it doesn't go far enough.
2. Allow citizens to buy insurance across state lines.  currently you can only buy insurance in your particular state, you can't buy it from another state.  By tearing down this restriction you immediately make insurance way more competitive (which is what the public option is suppose to do). The democrats are against this because they say that everyone will immediately go to the cheapest, easiest insurance to get and basically drive all other insurance companies out of business.It seems to me that is what we want to happen, except that the other insurance companies aren't going to go out of business, they are going to start pricing their product competitively.   This makes sense to me, and I haven't heard a good reason yet, why it wouldn't drive down prices.
3. Former Senator Bob Dole has been working on reconciliation between the Democrats and Republicans on health insurance reform.  Trying to forge a plan that both sides can agree to.  One aspect of this plan he is working on is for the government to setup a list of bench marks that they would like insurance to meet in the next five years.  Such as lower cost, mandatory acceptance without preconditions, etc.  The idea is that if the government were to step into health insurance it would take at least 5 years to be fully operational.  At least this way they give the insurance companies the ability to fix their issues and if in 5 years they haven't the U.S. government steps in with a public option.  When this was mentioned on "This Week", the democratic congresswoman on the show said, "I am tired of waiting, the industry hasn't cleaned itself up and we can't wait five more years".   I think this sort of attitude is prevalent throughout our society, which is I want it and I want it now, no matter what the cost.  Hasn't this sort of attitude led to the credit crisis, the mortgage crisis, etc, etc?