This topic is heating up in recent days. I think there are a lot of mis-understandings and mis-conception on this. One is a lot people think medicare is inefficient, I have not used medicare but it seems quite efficient in reality.
(Source: economist)
The bottom line is healthcare boils down to two issue:
1) Get more people covered;
2) In an efficient manner (reduce waste);
There will be winners and losers in this reform (which I think will pass, in some shape of form). Personally I think small insurance companies (lower profit or driven out of business), hospital/doctors (less profit or more work), pharmaceuticals (lower profit), etc. will likely lose. On the other hand, the newly covered, the healthcare IT providers (digitizing documents) etc. will be better off.
The risk is also 2 sides:
1) Rush a bill for the sake of passing a bill, without real change;
2) Do nothing.
For more discussion, see this 投资研究笔记 (1) – 美国的医疗改革(Healthcare Reform) at trader1688.