The New Health Dialogue

Sunny with a chance of ... comprehensive health reform?

Steven Pearlstein in this morning's Washington Post predicts a great weekend. Not just because we are finally having nice weather in the nation's capital. Not even because of NCAA basketball. Pearlstein is excited for the same reason we are. We're about to make history. Better health care. A stronger economy. Maybe even a sign of a government that can govern. Read what he has to say:

What strikes me about the lead-up to this weekend's health-care vote in the House is how quiet things actually are.

If, as Republicans would have us believe, Americans are so up in arms about the prospect of "Obamacare," why aren't there angry hordes marching on the Mall or jamming the halls of the Rayburn Building?

If the plan really represents a wholesale government takeover of one-sixth of the economy, why are so many associations representing private doctors, hospitals and drugmakers either supporting the legislation or staying relatively neutral?

And if this Democratic version of health reform is such a threat to economic prosperity, why are stocks, bonds and the dollar all rising this week as odds of passage increase?

One of the silliest Republican talking points is that Democrats are "ramming health-care reform down the throats of the American people." In fact, we've been talking about it, on and off, for decades, ultimately winding up with a solution that is not only remarkably centrist but also not all that different from the compromise nearly reached between Ted Kennedy and the Nixon White House in the early 1970s.

Indeed, although you'd never know it from the overheated rhetoric, the remarkable thing about the final proposal is how little it would change things, at least initially, for most Americans. That's no accident -- in fact, it's by political design. This plan is more like a time-release tablet meant to reform the system slowly from the inside out rather than surgically from the outside in. [...]

Over the past year, anyone following the health-care drama has been tempted, at various points, to question the judgment and the leadership of President Obama, his staff and the Democratic leaders in Congress. Should they succeed this weekend, however, there is no disputing that it will be a remarkable political achievement, the result of a combination of focus, determination, flexibility and patience not seen since the early Reagan years.

Most of all, enacting health-care reform would be a desperately needed victory for a political system teetering on the verge of breakdown. Years of polarization, partisanship and stalemate have led to a widespread and cynical belief that Washington is simply incapable of solving any major problem. Passing a health-care reform bill would restore not only a measure of trust and confidence in our political process but also, more significantly, trust and confidence in ourselves.

Looks like a pretty good forecast to us.