Health Care Reform: Dead

It pains me to say this, but I think it's true. Hope it's not, because Republicans and Democrats alike agree we need it.

I think the much-ballyhooed health care reform plan is dead. Kaput. No more.

Well, most of it anyway, the part that would radically change health care. There may be a concurrent resolution or something nifty and feel-goody that gets passed to mark the achievement of doing some fine talking, but I don't think that anything is going to pass the muster.

Too much sausage is getting made on either side. It's hurting the quality of the meat, the meat of course being the reform itself.

Each side can and will blame the other. They'd both be right. Some stubborn folks on not just each end of the aisle but stubbornness on each pew of each aisle has lead to a gridlock, despite some, I'm sure, wonderful progress on those respective side.

It came to me reading the Washington Post this morning. Senate Democrats are making noise about the lack of a public option in the finalized bill. This sent everyone in a position to get to their battle stations.

Speaker Pelosi says there will be a public option in any bill the House approves. Blue Dogs like Arkansas' Mike Ross say they won't sign anything with a public option, losing 50 or more crucial votes. 100+ members of the Progressive caucus and others say they won't vote for it if there's a lack of one. Gridlock.

The Senate Finance Committee is the last frontier of the health care bill. They are struggling admirably to arrive at a bipartisan conclusion. This will — according to Sen. Blanche Lincoln's numerous speeches at home — not include the public option, since it doesn't prove to be a "viable plan." Now Senate Democrats are ready to stand in the way of the 20 months of compromise that's been hashed out in the Finance Committee. Stalemate.

Lincoln, Ross, the President, and others have often clamored that the scary option in health care reform is "to do nothing." They certainly make a strong argument, with nearly 20 percent of every dollar Americans spend going toward health care, health care costs rising at nearly six times the rate of income, and the unsustainability of that path. Even Republicans confess that the system is flawed and outdated, if not completely broken.

But with each group at the ready to bring this bipartisan thing to a screeching halt — now, with no chance of a partisan bill being rammed through either — I think it's dead.

That's just me though. Maybe we'll try it again in another 15 years.