Post Mortem on the Health Care Bill

Well that was a big waste of time and effort. Your tax dollars at work. For the last eight years the House conservative ideologues huffed and puffed but could not blow down President Obama's house. But they sure did a job on their own place.

It's a strange situation. The conservatives got their way, which turns out to be the status quo as the Democrats left it, something they profess to dislike intensely.  Mrs. Pelosi claimed a great victory for the Democrats who were powerless to do anything without their conservative allies. She actually sounded pretty silly.

The President is a practical dealmaker and is most definitely not a conservative ideologue. In fact conservatives didn't particularly like him and some worked against his election. He was voted in based on his common sense perceptions of what was going wrong in our country, perceptions shared by a great many others who are also not conservative ideologues, in fact many Democrats. In his world of real estate deal making everyone gave in a little to get things done. Not so for conservative ideologues who, like petulant children, kick and scream to get their way, but find out in the end that mother was right after all.

To be sure Speaker Ryan's plan was complicated, and therefore there was no groundswell of support. It was carefully crafted so as not to hurt the Obamacare winners, to help those who need it, to move things toward a market based system, and to actually be enacted. For most people who are not political junkies this kind of complicated law, like Obamacare itself, was going to have to be passed to find out what was in it. The conservative ideologues would have none of this intricacy. Even the astute Dr Krauthammer favored passing a law that the Senate Democrats were sure to vote down and who would then take on the blame for its failure. But figuring out who to blame is hardly the point of fixing our health care system.

The President's focus is on getting his promises accomplished and he is going to move on. The conservative ideologues are saying that now we can begin again and do it right, but I think they're going to find that for now the rest of us are ready to move on as well. They have had their day. It strikes me that this fight might have been an opportunity for Democrats to exercise some influence. After all there is general admission that Obamacare is headed for major fiscal problems and needed major revision. Speaker Ryan's plan actually left Obamacare in place, albeit with considerable alterations. But unfortunately these days the liberal ideologues are just as much in the ascendency among Democrats as their counterpart conservatives among the Republicans.

The first hand has been played and Mr. Trump now knows where the cards lie. He's a quick learner, non-ideological and results oriented and it will be interesting where he goes from here.