2009 or Bust for Health Care
Ezra Klein explains how difficult it will be to pass health care reform at the federal level if it is not done this year.
I had lunch yesterday with a longtime Hill and administration health care adviser who argued, persuasively, that health care happens in 2009 or it doesn’t happen at all. For the next year or so, Congress is going to be prepared for major action. It will be willing to spend money. It will be far from the next election. A year from now, all that crashes down. The midterms will loom. The recognition of how much we’ve spent will dawn. The public pressure for dramatic action will ease. The aversion to risk will return. It’s not impossible to imagine health care happening late in the administration’s first term. But it’s very difficult. The money won’t be there. The budget hawks will be reempowered. The boom-bust cycle of elections will reemerge, and with it, the natural caution of Congress.
Klein is more confident than I am that the Obama Administration understands the ramifications of this dynamic.
