The debate is framed: health insurance = health care.
How does health insurance happen?
(1) payed by employer as a benefit + employee kicks in some premium payments
(2) self-bought if your employer doesn't offer or
(3) Medicare (provides insurance for age 65+) taxes
There is a sizable segment of the population that doesn't fall into categories 1-3.
Proposed solution: force people to buy insurance
(A) some can afford but opt not to buy so penalize them
(B) some can't afford - so they need subsidies; therefore, tax items #1 and #2 in some cases, tax wealthy (define wealthy?) and shift funds from #3.
Of course I've simplified matters greatly and there are all kinds of problems with this proposed solution but I've used up my 59 seconds as my goal was just to attempt to define the state of play.
Was this a fair and balanced description of the situation?
UPDATE: The thing is 2000+ pages so there are lot of "devil in the details" type analysis that can't be done in 59 seconds but I hope I got the big picture aspect of what they are trying to do.
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