Healthcare Hiatus

The lead article in today’s New York Times is titled, “Obama Weighs a Paring of Goals for a Health Bill.” It describes the new reality on Capitol Hill after the election of Scott Brown as the new Senator for Massachusetts.

Democrats still seemed stunned by the result and are already trying to pivot to address jobs and the economy. While the Obama administration is still holding out hope for a comprehensive bill, it now seems dead in the water.

What a waste. A full year of national attention and work by legislators all for naught. To me the most important part always was expanding coverage to 30 million people without healthcare, people who are dying every day as a result. What have we become in this nation to be so heartless about their predicament? (Republicans, this question is addressed to you).

There is still discussion about using reconciliation, so we only need 50 votes instead of a supermajority, but items for reconciliation must be directly related to the budget. And the Senators all seem more worried about keeping their jobs at this point instead of following through on healthcare.

I am depressed about the whole thing. So much hard work. So many hard fought victories, and to have it end like this. Maybe, the next few days will allow our legislators to coalesce around some sort of solution, but I’m not holding my breath.