Wisewon, king of the health commenters, says, "I've never understood what you meant by 'integrating the system' until now. ...I'm not sure that I'd characterize Wyden's plan in that way. Its been a while since I've read the details of the plan, but my recollection is that the insurance pools are primarily focused on administrative simplification (from a customer/consumer standpoint), pooling risk, etc. They are not involved, as I think you suggest, in dealing directly with cost controls. If that's the case, and your general point is about integration--> cost controls, they Wyden's plan isn't integrated in that manner." One of the downsides of blogging is that, unlike in a feature article where you methodically build your case and outline every supporting argument, a blog post just makes one point, and assumes some pre-knowledge of past work. So let me wander through the integration argument again:
