"America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009."

Maybe now we're getting somewhere.

The Washington Post's Ezra Klein, who has been covering health care reform for the paper, sounds cautiously optimistic about today's release of the House health care reform bill. You can download the bill here.

Klein points out that three committees--Energy and Commerce, Ways and Means, and Education and Labor--banded together this go-'round, as opposed to 15 years ago, when the Clinton health care plan went down in flames due to a haphazard approach, committee provincialism and less public support for change.

Here's a summary of the Public Plan. Other summary documents are here.

Republicans are predictably howling about a middle-tax tax increase to pay for the bill, but Democrats, according to the New York Times, say the additional surcharge would affect "only 1.2 percent of all households in the United States."

Initially, that charge would be from 1 to 5.4 percent, beginning with individuals earning more than $280,000 and families with a gross adjusted annual income of more than $350,000. In 2011, a family making $500,000 per year would pay an additional $1,500 to subsidize coverage of the uninsured, and a family earning $1 million would kick in an additional $9,000.

According to the National Coalition on Health Care, total expenditures continue to rise at twice the rate of inflation, it is 17 percent of our gross national product, there are nearly 47 million uninsured Americans, and we spend six times more per capita on the administration of this patchwork system than Western Europeans pay for theirs--and they enjoy universal coverage.

The time for change is now.