[quote]QUOTE: Small businesses are the worst hit by private insurance. Health care premiums have increased across the board way faster than income, and even as the economy has begun to tank. Since a government plan would not have the tremendous overhead that private insurers do, and would not have to satisfy shareholders with tremendous mark-ups, their prices would be much more stable and affordable (as is seen with Medicare).[/quote] True, the small businesses have been hit hard by private insurance. But this bill forces small businesses to provide health care for there employees. Do it, or pay a fine. Totally small business friendly :P . And all of this in the middle of a terrible economy? Really? What a stupid idea. Once the businesses can\'t pay for health care, their employees will have to go on the public option. Just more burden on the already overloaded United States taxpayers, more rationing, and a lower quality of care. By the way, all of the sudden the public option isn\'t as big of a deal to Obama and Sebielus (did I spell that right). She now says that\'s not the essential element of the bill. Then what\'s the bill for? Like she says, it\'s all about choice and competition (note the conservative lingo, there. They must have noticed that 40-some percent of Americans identify themselves as conservatives). But it\'s hard to imagine any fair competition between the private market and the government option when the government is trying to be the regulator of prices and the competitor. That\'s not competition. I would also like to take a moment to point out one crucial element to people that try to use statistics to prove that the socialistic health care systems are the best: Remember that there are over 300 million Americans, with races varying. We have Caucasians, African-Americans, Latinos, Japanese Americans, etc. So it is good to point out that while one country may have a longer life expectancy, the US also has far more variables affecting it\'s overall life expectancy. For example, the Japanese, I hear, are a very healthy people, genetically. More healthy then, say, Africans. So, if you had a solidly Japanese country and a solidly African country, both with the exact same quality of health care and the same health care system, it would not be surprising if the Japanese life expectancy was at least a couple of years longer. It doesn\'t always mean they have better health care or a better system. So now I think it\'s worth quoting Canadian doctor David Gratzer: [i]\"One often-heard argument, voiced by the New York Times\' Paul Krugman and others, is that America lags behind other countries in crude health outcomes. But such outcomes reflect a mosaic of factors, such as diet, lifestyle, drug use and cultural values. It pains me as a doctor to say this, but health care is just one factor in health. Americans live 75.3 years on average, fewer than Canadians (77.3) or the French (76.6) or the citizens of any Western European nation save Portugal. Health care influences life expectancy, of course. But a life can end because of a murder, a fall or a car accident. Such factors aren\'t academic — homicide rates in the U.S. are much higher than in other countries. In The Business of Health, Robert Ohsfeldt and John Schneider factor out intentional and unintentional injuries from life-expectancy statistics and find that Americans who don\'t die in car crashes or homicides outlive people in any other Western country. And if we measure a health care system by how well it serves its sick citizens, American medicine excels. Five-year cancer survival rates bear this out. For leukemia, the American survival rate is almost 50%; the European rate is just 35%. Esophageal carcinoma: 12% in the U.S., 6% in Europe. The survival rate for prostate cancer is 81.2% here, yet 61.7% in France and down to 44.3% in England — a striking variation. Like many critics of American health care, though, Krugman argues that the costs are just too high: health care spending in Canada and Britain, he notes, is a small fraction of what Americans pay. Again, the picture isn\'t quite as clear as he suggests. Because the U.S. is so much wealthier than other countries, it isn\'t unreasonable for it to spend more on health care. Take America\'s high spending on research and development. M.D. Anderson in Texas, a prominent cancer center, spends more on research than Canada does.[/i]\" :) That\'s the main part. You can ignore the rest if you like. I\'d rather not eliminate anything from this part, I apologize for the lengthy-ness.