1.   A pioneer in creating private marketplaces for newly deregulated commodities, Enron was touted as a revolutionary force, bridging the dot-com world and stodgy energy markets.

2.   Bush administration officials and other Republican administrations have long been philosophically opposed to meddling in the private marketplace.

3.   But Congress has been reluctant to interfere in the private marketplace.

4.   But others say Medicare needs to move cautiously, given the difficulties of shifting an older, medically vulnerable population into the private marketplace.

5.   In contrast, they say, the Democrats last year were trying to reconfigure the entire private health care marketplace.

6.   It emphasized that the solutions to some problems, like the growing numbers of people without health insurance, rested not with government bureaucracy but with the private marketplace.

7.   Such a scenario would eventually force the government to enter the private marketplace and create political controversy over how the money should be invested.

8.   Those include not just an array of tax cuts but proposals like the restructuring of Medicare to transform it to a largely private health care marketplace, Norquist contended.