The public knows the GOP is fibbing

There have always been two basic arguments for health insurance reform: one based in morality, the other self-interest. For a documented 45,000 persons to die prematurely in America each year because they can't afford proper care is a national disgrace. Almost everybody apart from "conservatives" whose moral imagination is limited to judging other people's sex lives understands that. In short, hardcore opposition is mainly confined to the Republican "base," itself increasingly confined to the South. Hence the odds of Obama's signing what the New Republic's Jonathan Chait correctly calls "one of the towering social reforms in American history" appear excellent. Chait, however, also thinks progressives should shut up and accept a deeply flawed bill. He fails to grasp why some suspect Democrats could be slow-walking into political disaster. See, that's where the self-interest side of the argument comes in. Because the widely publicized bill proposed by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., not only won't get Republican votes, it would also do little to restrain galloping cost increases. That's why insurance and pharmaceutical lobbyists love it.