The future of health-care reform

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Preparing for Obama's HCR speech tonight, make sure to read TNR's Jon Cohn's excellent overview of where the debate currently stands. Key passage:

Somehow, though, health reform is not dead. Despite all of the setbacks and all of the missed opportunities -- despite this train wreck of a month -- the situation remains remarkably similar to what it was before the recess. Significant health care legislation is likely to pass, particularly if Obama manages to give a good speech on Wednesday night. And while the possibilities for what that legislation might accomplish have certainly diminished, mostly for worse, it's not clear how much they have diminished -- and to what extent progressives may yet have the power to change that fact.

And, yes, reconciliation is still an option:

But the greatest risk with reconciliation is that the process produces a weak bill, an incomplete one, or, in the very worst case, a counter-productive one -- not that it fails to produce any bill at all. The Democratic Party isn't necessarily the bravest. (If it was, it'd have passed reform already.) But it’s also not the dumbest. Failing to pass a bill when they have the numbers would be politically suicidal, just like it was in the 1990s. Having committed themselves to passing legislation, they now must follow through. They knew that before August. Knock on wood, they still know it today.

Democrats have no excuse not to do what is right for America.