President Obama has repeatedly attempted to sell his government takeover of healthcare as a centerist, middle of the road policy. Something that won’t be radical, but rather will be ‘consensus’ based.
Well, liberal-blogger & columnist Ezra Kein has blown the lie out of the water, and gloated, in great detail, how despite the so-called "compromises", this bill is an unparalleled massive government takeover of healthcare which will lead to greater government control over every aspect of our lives, and is a ideological, not practical, measure:
Private insurance will now be a very different beast: It will have to spend 85 percent or 80 percent (depending on the market) of every premium dollar on care. It won’t be able to reject people for preexisting conditions. It will be in a regulated exchange where it has to justify premium increases and bad behavior or face exclusion. And those exchanges, regulations and subsidies will also create the core structure of a universal health-care system in this country…
… the fact of it is that this bill represents an enormous leftward shift for American social policy. It is not, in my view, a sufficient leftward shift, but it is unmatched by anything that has passed into law in recent decades. Progressives have lost some very hard battles but are on the cusp of winning an incredibly important war. For all its imperfections, health-care reform itself is deeply, deeply progressive. (emphasis added)