Mitch,

Former president Clinton got it exactly wrong when he said, “It’s not important to be perfect here.”

Legislation that spells out rules in 2,000 pages of excruciating detail and establishes a new bureaucracy that will control the health and lives of 300 million people needs to be perfect. We have seen the results of less-than-perfect health care legislation and regulation for a half-century or longer.

It is not important for every single doctor or health care decision be perfect – there are other doctors and usually opportunities to correct decisions. The opportunities to make small tactical adjustments to the complete overhaul of one-sixth of the economy, however, are far fewer and further between.

Isn’t that lack of perfection in the past one of President Obama’s selling points – it’s taken a century to get a government takeover of health care and he’s going to get it done?