The End of Health Care Reform as We Know It

Even as President Barack Obama celebrates his first year in office, a political beanbag comes flying out of right field, as the Democrats have lost Ted Kennedy's senate seat to a Republican. This guarantees that the struggles of the past year will soon be looked back upon as the good old days.

Scott Brown is the new senator from Massachusetts, having Hailed Mary over his Democratic opponent, one Martha Coakley. Now, glum liberals are left to ponder what might've been, with their "filibuster-proof" majority rendered to the footnotes of history. Gleeful conservatives, at the same time, find their sails filled in a way that must seem unfamiliar to them.

Each side will spin the results of this special election to their own liking. Is it a referendum on the Democrats? Or on health care reform? Or even on Obama himself? The left wing will say no; it's just a sign that it wasn't really Ted Kennedy's Massachusetts anymore. The right wing will say that it is, and they'll gyrate to country music while saying it.

The Tea Party types will try to take the credit for Brown's unexpected victory (as will the RNC) and will trumpet this as America's return to conservative principles. Progressives will try to diminish this by blaming Coakley herself for not trying hard enough. Neither is entirely true. Both are right.

Can it be that America, after all the Bushies put her through, is still a center-right nation beholden to conservatism? Or is it something that she is afflicted with, the way a dog has fleas whether it wants to have them or not? Once those questions have been put through the sifter, an even harder one will have to be addressed by all:

Is health care reform dead? This is about the united stakes of America. The bill that has been churning in the sausage grinder all year long is not, when you really look at it, that good for anyone except the big insurance companies. Sure, it would have made them accept folks with pre-existing condtions, but it didn't cap premiums and it didn't give us a public option.

Nobody liked it, not from the time it burst forth from Max Baucus's Finance Committee, and for various reasons. The biggest afront it posed came in the form of The Mandate. Only the most dedicated of liberals didn't get squeamish in the face of that. In a free country, the government doesn't issue mandates, at least not where matters of choice are concerned.

With a year of hard work likely frittered to the wind, we are much more likely to see something done in reconciliation, where existing programs can be tweaked by Congress without a 60-vote majority. In other words, they'll lower Medicare's eligibility age to zero, putting those insurance companies completely out of business.

Then you'll hear some howling from Republicans and the insurance companies they so love. And they'll still be too stupid to realize they have only themselves to blame.

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