Too Left to Be Accepted

Matt Yglesias has a post up looking at the comparative costs and the number of people now uninsured that would be covered under various Congressional health care plans. Pete Stark's AmeriCare plan would cover and additional 49 million people and lower the overall cost by nearly 59 billion dollars.
Matt's argument is that we will never accept a plan like Stark's because of ideology...it is just too left wing to be accepted. In Matt's words;

Some folks, of course, will oppose the Stark plan because they’re right-wingers who don’t want to expand health care coverage. And some folks, will want to focus their energies on other, worse, plans because those plans have a better chance of passing. But what’s incredibly frustrating is that a lot of people who claim to want to change public policy to expand health care coverage and better control health care costs will nonetheless fail to embrace Stark’s plan or anything similar for no real reason other than ideological posturing. It just can’t be the case, as a matter of centrist dogma, that the best solution is actually the most left-wing solution. It’s a far more ideological stance than anything you’ll ever hear from Pete Stark or from me. But the people hewing to it will insist on being called pragmatists.

It's a pretty short post but has two shocking graphics. The sad thing is that Matt is probably right and it is really disheartening.