If we're going to be socialists who destroy America anyways, can we at least get a real bill?

I woke up this morning to find my facebook page inundated with messages about Congress ramming inappropriate things down our collective throats, killing babies, nuking the Constitution and apparently losing the Cold war 20 years after it ended and falling to the red devils. Yes, last night the House passed the Health care bill (or as Facebook tells me, America, freedom and democracy died last night.)

I'll admit, I was fairly excited. I hadn't been vigilantly following the health care bill for the past month or so; after months of exhaustive analysis it just got too frustrating to continually watch things swing around without ever moving forward. Frankly I doubted anything was ever going to actually happen. So as I munched on my morning toast, I happily moused over to CNN to see what had actually gotten passed.

What socialist delight would await me? A public option perhaps? Tough reforms for the insurance industry? Puppies for everyone? With all the outrage, it had to be something good.

Uhm, seriously? This is the lamest, mildest bill I've ever seen. The government is taking over health care the same way the government takes over food by requiring it to be safe and restricting our freedom to buy spoiled, salmonella ridden beef. The government isn't running anything. This is still an entirely private system, just with some very wussy regulation tossed in. This is barely health care reform, it's just incremental insurance regulation.

People. This isn't socialism. This is like the wild west finally getting a sheriff, only the sheriff is giving the outlaws a few years to shape up and some subsidies to help the bitter taste of law go down a little easier.

Oh, and that 73% of people hate the bill thing? Most lefties are probably in that number. This isn't what we want. I'm not nuts about the bill. I wanted a single payer system. Or at the very least a decent public option, you know, as a compromise. (You can use your beloved private companies, and I can get decent insurance, with low overhead, less stupid denials and still afford to eat!) 

I'm ok with this bill. I'm ok with making it illegal to deny coverage to domestic violence victims and others with preexisting conditions. I'm ok with trying to make healthcare more affordable and accessible through insurance polls, subsidies (sort of) and regulations.

I'm less ok with some other parts. I understand the reasoning behind fining individuals, but it bothers me that we're forcing people to purchase a flawed product without giving them a real alternative. I'm a little worried about unintended consequences too.

But overall this isn't really what I was looking for. It doesn't get to the heart of the problem, it doesn't fix or rework our already hodgepodge system, it just slaps on some more duct tape over the worst failings and adds a few new leaks.

Really, if even after all the compromises and watering down, we're still going to get screamed at for being evil, moronic, socialists and get no bipartisan support or even honest discussion (from members of Congress, not necessarily all individuals. For MoC, just saying lets start from scratch and do everything our way while calling names doesn't count), why couldn't we have just done a good, solid bill, the kind Democrats (you know, the ones who were elected by a huge majority to the House, Senate and Presidency by America in 2008?) actually campaigned on and wanted?