Krugman makes a good point about the opposition:
In fact, I may have a new hypothesis about the political economy of the health care fight. One thing that’s obvious, if you look at the balking Democrats I chided in today’s column, is that almost all of them come from states with small population. These are also, by and large, states in which one or at most two private insurers dominate the market.
So here’s a suggestion: while the opponents of a private plan [think he means public plan] say that they’re trying to defend market competition, what they’re actually doing is defending lucrative local monopolies.
--Noam Scheiber