Health Care Deal

Senate Democrats have apparently secured the necessary 60 votes to pass the current version of their health care bill by Christmas. Judging from what I've read about the contents of the bill, I believe it should be passed.

Here's some sense of the latest changes, and while I am troubled by what the bill lacks, I am most persuaded by descriptions like this--in a Washington Post oped Sunday by Victoria Kennedy--of what the bill does do:

" Thirty million Americans who do not have coverage would finally be able to afford it. Ninety-four percent of Americans would be insured. Americans would finally be able to live without fear that a single illness could send them into financial ruin.

Insurance companies would no longer be able to deny people the coverage they need because of a preexisting illness or condition. They would not be able to drop coverage when people get sick. And there would be a limit on how much they can force Americans to pay out of their own pockets when they do get sick."

It is even more important to pass this bill, and quickly get through conference committee and get the final bill signed into law. It is time for this to be over.

Once the bill is passed, the light can shine on the disgraceful conduct of congressional Republicans. As a candidate, Barack Obama made a persuasive case for an end to political divisiveness for its own sake, particularly on major issues of common concern. He tried to work with Republicans on this issue and others, and was rebuffed, insulted, lied to and lied about, and worse. For the next several days anyone paying attention will see even more clearly the Republican strategy of obstruction for its own sake. At at time when we need substantive attempts to find the best solutions for increasingly dangerous problems, we are mired in politics of the worst sort, and discourse that is as crude as any I remember, and even more shamelessly mendacious than any in my lifetime.

The end of the health care debate will free the White House from the pretense that congressional Republicans are acting as a legitimate partner in governing, or that the political hysteria Republicans are whipping up nationally is either normal or useful. It is all unpatriotic and undemocratic. I expect President Obama to unleash hell on the Republicans in the next year for their obstructionism, for their abdication of a constructive role in democracy. And they deserve it.