I wonder if that's even possible given the quantitative difference between the Democratic ideal (well, for many Democrats certainly) of a national single-payer system and the Republican ideal of tort reform and expansion of competition. I think it would be right to be skeptical about the Republican ideas. There are already loads of private insurers, but that competition doesn't seem to have driven down costs. And most analyses I've seen suggest that tort reform would only offer a minor reprieve from cost escalation.

On this issue, can the Democratic and Republican ideas mix and do anything at all? We'll see.

I do, however, think that it may be possible to achieve greater percentages of insured people without a single-payer system if the government is more involved in regulation of the insurance industry. Maybe there are some compromises that can be made there? Still, I've seen others argue that such regulation will only increase the cost of private insurance.

Despite the allegations of fraud and abuse, Medicare is nonetheless rates well as an insurer in terms of percent of dollars spent on care vs. administration. One could argue that this version of a single- payer government plan is already better than what we have. I've yet to see Republicans mount an effective counter-argument to this.