Will the final version contain a tax on health benefits? I'm hopeful it won't, given what Kennedy has done lately and other concessions made by some pretty big players. But if it does? Still not a deal breaker for me--even though I personally will feel the pinch.

Right now there's a lot of horse trading going on and people are seizing on bits and pieces and trying to say "ah, ha! see!" Nothing is in stone yet. But if by the time they get done slugging it out it becomes necessary to tax health care benefits, I--a person who stands to lose just as much as any person you can front as an example--would still support it.

The Right's answer so far as been to foist cost and risk onto the backs of its citizens. That's no long-term solution. Come on. There's been nothing that has been proposed by the Right that has been anything better than band aids on a gaping wound.