A more intelligent debate on Health care reform

If, like me, you are tired of the discussions regarding health care reform revolving around absurd and foolish claims about "Nazis," "Hitler," "Death Panels," "Socialism," "publicly funded abortion," and numerous other very ignorant and dishonest claims, you might enjoy this calm and rational discussion between Howard Dean and Bill Frist.

This is from an Episode of Charlie Rose at the end of July. Frist represents a fiscally conservative approach, Dean the standard progressive approach to reform.

I think both men are worth listening to. This is very refreshing. It's nice to hear two sensible people discussing reform without firearms, shouting, and lying. Of course I think Frist is wrong about the public option - he does, however, say some very sensible things about cost containment - and that we have solid evidence and argument to show that he is wrong, but he is not stupid nor irrational.



I also want to stress that not every conservative opponent of democratic health care reform is a "town-hall lunatic." This is important. Too often critics of the "deathers" and their like are told we are snobs who intolerantly dismiss all critics of our progressive goals. That is flatly not true. And this discussion on Charlie rose nicely illustrates that not all critics are of the same breed as the woman who called Barney Frank a Nazi