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March 22, 2010

The Atlantic: Health care reform passage as "a tainted victory".

Sunday's vote was "landmark", sure. So is each Hell's Angels' Labor Day Picnic. But it's not over, even procedurally, and so far it hasn't been pretty: the way the bill got passed says more about us as a divided, enraged and mean-spirited people than it does about how far we've come on health care in America. Maybe the best single take right now is Clive Crook's piece this morning for The Atlantic entitled "A Tainted Victory". Excerpts:

It is absurd that getting the Senate bill through the House should have been such a struggle.

[Scott] Brown won in Massachusetts for a reason. The Democrats had failed to make their case for this reform to the American public. They pressed the case for some sort of reform, but that was easy: the country was already there.

What the country dislikes is this particular bill, and the Democrats, intent on arguing among themselves, barely even tried to change its mind.

People struggle to understand how extending health insurance to 32 million Americans, at a cost of a trillion dollars over ten years, can be a deficit-reducing measure.

Posted by JD Hull at March 22, 2010 11:59 PM

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