Every single person who says "start over" is in total denial. Every single one.

[BzaDem]

No exceptions. If you even just say the words "start over," you are in denial.

People who say "start over" are people who can't come to terms with the fact that the current option (Senate bill + reconciliation for fixes) is not what they want. Confronted with the tension between really, really wanting something and not being able to get something, they make up a completely implausible scenario and close their mind from even thinking superficially about its feasibility. I guess it is a natural human reaction, because I have been seeing it all over the place here.

In reality, the filibuster is not going anywhere. 60 votes is here to stay. A vote to go nuclear and lower the threshold through a point of order might get 15 supporters, maybe 20.

And in reality, regardless of what you feel the reason is, we are going to lose LARGE numbers of seats in both houses in the fall.

Looking at history, it will probably take us another one or two decades to get back to the point where we have a president, a 40+ seat majority in the House, and a 60+ seat majority in the Senate. It will only be at that point that the option to tackle healthcare. And you know what? We probably still won't do it. After seeing what happened the last two times, we still probably will not do anything substantive (or even try very hard).

If we are lucky, we might get incremental reform (that pales in comparison to the current Senate bill) in a decade or two. If we are unlucky, it won't even be tried until most of the government wasn't even around to remember what happened.

What certainly won't happen is a collapse of the healthcare system prompting an immediate enactment of Single Payer. If you believe that, I guess you believe that the collapse of our economy last Fall will usher in an immediate reform of the financial sector from the top down. Oops. That didn't happen.

There will be an ever increasing number of uninsured, and people who get very ill will continue to go bankrupt. The pain for these people will continue to be unbelievable. But NOTHING will be done about it, because despite all of this, the number of people who are sick and/or uninsured is too low to force Congress to do anything. This isn't going to change significantly. The skyrocketing medical costs will continue to be shifted onto the relatively smaller sick population, and a healthy majority of people will oppose or be indifferent to HCR because they will continue to be satisfied with their health insurance (only because they never have to use it).

For those that think that withholding your vote until this is fixed will actually cause it to be fixed, please point out ONE time in the history of the United States where that has worked. Progressives will continue to be unenthusiastic and turn out to vote in lower numbers, until they are reminded to vote by a massive Republican landslide election. They will then become enthusiastic until Democrats win again, and become unenthusiastic thereafter. The cycle will continue, but it won't cause your policies to be enacted.

And for those that think that the solution to all of this is to start a third party, you should take a quick glance at our Constitution. We live in a structural-two-party, winner-take-all system. It is structurally impossible for a successful third party to form, and it is mathematically impossible for any third party to win a non-negligible number of elections for non-negligible federal offices.

What is the point of all of this? The point is that we currently have a choice. We can either enact the Senate bill (with some changes via reconciliation), or the above description will continue to describe the status quo for most of your lifetime.

Many want to kill the Senate bill. Some think that having a mandate to purchase a private product is so bad that anyone with a pre-existing condition should be thrown under the bus. I don't think I am going to convince anyone who thinks this that this is BS. But let's be clear and unambiguous: the choice is really between:

Senate bill + reconciliation for changes

or

NOTHING.

No pie-in-the-sky starting-over plan this year, no massive political revolution in 5 years for Single Payer, no attempt to deal with this legislatively in 10 years, and no successful third party run in 15 years. It is really this or nothing for a very, very, very long time.

If you think that we should kill the bill, by all means argue that. But argue why having the status quo for 20 years is better than the Senate bill. Don't argue why some magical non-realistic plan that you favor is better than the Senate bill. Those who argue the latter are in denial and are not being honest with themselves.