My marker for Obama was whether he’d get a health care bill with a public option. He didn’t. A year ago passage of some sort of health care reform seemed inevitable, and not a tremendous challenge. Only a year of dithering and bipartisaning and gangs of wankers and pre-compromising and, frankly, failure to put forward something simple and popular jeopardized it.
The bill’s more good than bad, but it isn’t what we should have gotten. It isn’t what we voted for.
If passage of this bill helps a single person anywhere, then it was worth passing in whatever form possible. Health care in this country is a total clusterfuck, as anyone who’s ever dealt with an insurance company knows. But teabagger freakouts notwithstanding, this only barely qualifies as a victory.