I missed Friday’s debate but please can we all remember 3 things before we continue to get too excited about the Obama/Clinton faux dispute

a) Mandates alone don’t work to get to 100% coverage–every employer mandate has exemptions–every individual mandate needs exemptions or subsidies AND it needs a fundamental re-set on how ALL health insurers currently operateb) Most likely any mandate bill will get bargained down to less than it needs to be to workc) Unless the recession is really really bad and still that way in mid-2009, the current health insurance problem is not bad enough for there to be  a groundswell of support for an actual meaningful bill to pass over the sure to be violent opposition of AHIP, PhRMA, AHA, AMA et al.

Which means we’ll either get nothing or some watered down version of what AHIP/AMA proposes.

Which means we’ll all be back in 2012 asking how to fix health care…