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>>Agree with everything in your post except the last sentence.<<

I hope you’re right. I also hope Romney can actually convince me that he won’t just settle for “improving” Obamacare, instead of repealing it, or completely defunding it.

That’s my problem. A Republican Congress, faced with a President Obama, will just defund it. But faced with a President Romney, they will almost certainly get talked into tweaking it, especially if the Senate Dems filibuster a repeal. I just don’t think Romney will defund it; he’s got too much invested in Romneycare, and will be tempted to “fix” what’s wrong with Romneycare at the national level, i.e., he’ll tweak Obamacare, which would be a disaster and we’d lose any chance of getting rid of it.

Obamacare is a make or break issue for me. We keep it; we’re toast as a country, because it will bankrupt us, while imperiling our health simultaneously.

As long as I’m at it, here’s a sane plan that could be substituted for the insane individual mandate (my own idea, held, in print, since 1993.) This idea, by the way, would be incorporated within a system of private health insurance, not a government plan.

All the government would have to do is establish a grace period during which virtually everyone, whether wheelchair bound, on dialysis, etc., could sign up for an individual plan as a Fully Insurable Individual. As long as we sign up during the grace period, premiums would be the same as for any other individual.

Fail to sign up during the grace period and you lose the status of a Fully Insurable Individual and any insurance company could lawfully require a physical and could exclude any pre-existing conditions while charging the normal premium they charge everyone else of your age and sex, or require a rider and an additional premium associated with that rider.

When a person turns, say, 19, they would enter an automatic 6 months grace period during which they would be a Fully Insurable Individual. Fail to get insured during that time - lose that status and be subject to a physical.

If, after losing the status, one eventually passed a physical later and was given a clean policy, they would re-acquire the status of a Fully Insurable Individual (FII).

I won’t go into any more of the details here, unless someone wants me too, but essentially the Fully Insurable Individual status would replace the need for an individual mandate, and would allow the private insurance market to function properly. It would also provide a convenient avenue for government to play a role in ensuring that those too down-on-their-luck to maintain coverage could still have insurance, by subsidizing the cost of the most basic policy available so that they could retain their FII status.