Some of the provisions could certainly be severable, though rewriting would be needed to avoid the problem that, if indeed you cannot turn away people with preexisting conditions, that people will just buy health insurance as soon as they figure out they have such conditions, swamping the market. I never understood the market mechanics of the individual mandate, but now i understand that forcing everyone to buy in pours revenue into the system to balance against the fact that they have to insure the unprofitable.

Another problem that would have been sidestepped if the Democrats had grown some gonads and pushed for universal care. If everyone's paying into one system, the healthy can easily subsidize the sick.

As opposed as I am to universal health care and all other positive rights, this garbage bill seems like the worst of both worlds. A large part of our problem is that we have a third party payer system. That will always be a problematic arrangement whether the third party is the government or a health insurance company, but having the government forcing people to do business with the "evil, greedy" insurance companies while whoever is the sitting Secretary of HHS makes up the rules on the fly is just the ultimate turd sandwich.

What would you rather it be? A first party payment system would require an insanely radical revision of the medical system as we know it (with, for instance, general practitioner MDs having to drastically, drastically, drastically lower their salary expectations). People would balk and even in the lower prices that would result after the period of transitional chaos, people with real chronic conditions would still be left out in the cold.

I should care that a general practitioner is going to have to lower his salary expections... why?

Most of the supposed benefits of the government's interventionism in the health care industry are mere smoke and mirrors at best. Just like its interventionism into the housing market, just like its interventionism into higher education. I'm pretty weary of people being astonished by the fact that perverting market forces leads to a perverted market, including those spiraling costs everyone enjoys carping about so much.