Even if we can't get there all at once, we can at least set our sights high. We'll never know if he was right. We're seeing something of the same confusion between goals and tactics in the skirmishes between Al Gore and Bill Bradley. The predictable responses to Bill Bradley's big ideas are that they won't work, they can't be done, and we can't afford them. His health care plan is being nit-picked by policy wonks.
Some wonkish concerns are legitimate.
Current enrollees in the federal employees' health care program, on which Bradley bases his plan, are higher paid and generally in better health than the uninsured poor whom Bradley wants to invite in. That means his estimated cost of insuring them may be too low. On the other hand, critics who want to preserve Medicaid miss the point. There's no principled difference between someone who's very poor and eligible for Medicaid and some one who's just poor, but now ineligible. Many move in and out of eligibility as their meager incomes rise slightly and then fall.