Health Care Bill Passed After 11 Months of Effort! Now What?

Current Tunes: Megadeth – Washington is Next!

How monumental is this health care debate to our world? Well apparently it was the 2nd longest Senate debate in history, short only of the discussion over whether or not to join the fight in World War I. But it’s passed now. After a little fine-tuning here and there, it looks like Obama will sign it into law soon.

I wish I knew whether or not I was legally obliged to acquire health insurance under this plan. I’m still in this gray area of student/worker/adult whatever. If I am indeed going to be forced by the government to purchase a health care plan, that might be a silver lining. It would certainly light a fire under me to pick myself up and get a real, 40-hour/week job.

That’s not really what had my attention when I look at the passing of this bill. When I read about this being such a long debate that stacked up to the WWI Senate debates, it immediately called to my mind Woodrow Wilson for me. Suddenly my thoughts turned to a smirking irony, as I added it up in my head and saw Obama become Wilson Jr., in a sense. Wilson was a guy who was laughably idealistic, and had such grandiose plans for America and wanted them to happen, no matter the cost. But he still had these idealistic tendencies, and in politics those are always one of the first costs.

Obama marketed himself as a guy who wouldn’t make those compromises, but it looks to me like he’s already getting a taste of what that’s going to be like. No bipartisan support on anything. Guantanamo's Torture Hotel still not closed for another year. No financial/banking reform. Not saying I want it to turn out this way, but I can totally look to the future and see Obama wheeling around town, broken, beaten, and never smiling just like Wilson did at the end of his time in office, shaking out the hollow shell of a farce they called the League of Nations.

It’s taken him a whole year to build this health care business to this point. I’ll grant him he had some extraordinary barriers in his way, but certainly he wasn’t naïve enough to think the Republicans would just roll over for him, did he? Things will only get tougher from here on out, especially if Republicans win back some seats in the next election. As we say in the south, he better get while the gettin’s good.

I may not have voted for him last year, but I was willing to give him a shot. I thought he’d hit the ground running hard, but it looks like he may have hit just a little too hard and gradually lost all the momentum. If the election were tomorrow I don’t know who I’d vote for, but it certainly wouldn’t be Obama at this point.