Evil "I'm very worried about the entire package - not just taxpayer funding of abortion." Yeah, well, if you invent things that do not exist then you will have plenty impediments to good sleep. What is happening is that some women will get financial aid to sign up on insurance plans that do not bar them from abortions. That is not federal aid for abortions, that is federal aid to achieve the option to have an abortion along with thousands of other medically related treatments, operation, whathaveyou. "But what I was referring to above was a more profound, society-wide general shift in attitudes about the proper roles and responsibilties of government." I see the matter of government as a probabilistic, economic and financial factor that can be encompassed by my faculties - that is, I trust myself to observe where government is needed, and where it is not, and then adjust accordingly. There is a moral dimension to it as well - the potential of government to impede people in their affairs, and the potential of the absence of government to leave real and immoral injustices uncorrected. I do not see any metaphysical aspect to the question of whether or not to force some insurance companies to change their proceedings or forcing people to buy insurance. There is a probability coefficient for unintended consequences and harm befalling people with this changes, but in the American context the repercussions of holding back are also severe. If one goes by a strict, philosophical and metaphysical view of government as an intrinsic problem, then this bill is bad by default. I, however, see government as a fickle but ultimately definable and quantifiable factor that can be allocated rationally and intelligently. Drug stores etc. should be private matters, while health-care is more akin to agriculture - it's a feature of society that cannot be left to itself if systematic suffering, financial and social, is observed. I do not see the idea of widespread cultural degeneration or some tendency towards reliance or self-entitlement to be attributable to be common-sensically attributable to bills such as this recent one. Those problems run deeper and should be addressed by people with sociological education. I am not an environmentalist or a statist for desiring some kind of collective commitment to prevent an emissions-related tragedy of the commons - that is my awareness of economic reality speaking. Same thing regarding my support for this reform - it stems mostly from a desire to go from a woeful situation to a better one. Hedging the ephemeral character of society on whether or not people have to wait until they must go to the ER for health-care seems... Simplistic.