As published for Critical Condition on healthcare.nationalreview.com on December 22, 2009:

Rich Lowry and Bob Costa have done a nice job laying out the ways in which the Democrats could still trip up on health care. Still, the unfortunate reality is that the prospects for real reform are bleak, and some version of the current bill is almost certainly going to pass at this point.

We did not get to this place overnight. Mark Schmitt’s post on The American Prospectreveals a lot about the way the Left approached the health-care issue over the last decade and a half since the Clinton plan failed. According to Schmitt:

The work underlying the current health-reform effort began years before Obama even announced his campaign for the White House. . . . Advocates and funders put massive resources into groups such as Health Care for America Now. They picked up political scientist Jacob Hacker’s idea of a public plan . . . and they worked to ensure that all the Democratic candidates for president (with the exception of single-payer stalwart Rep. Dennis Kucinich) converged around roughly the same basic model.

In sum, according to Schmitt, “Years of health-reform-policy development, projects to improve public awareness of health reform, and advocacy campaigns were able to lay the groundwork for health reform well in advance.”

Read the full post here