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Well, it passed. It's a cobbled together package of compromises that thrills no one, on the left or the right, but soon the president will sign into law the new health care bill, and my insurance company won't be able to kick me off its rolls just because I get sick. (For a list of ten things that the new bill will immediately achieve for you and me, see Crooks and Liars' handy post.)
Universal health care it ain't. Recent estimates say at least 5 million Americans will remain uninsured. Nor does it do as much as I'd like to free medicine, the tenets of which are almost diametrically opposed to profit-making - ask any doctor - from quarterly returns and complex market pressures. (How complex? Listen to The American Life's exceptional two-part series on how we got to the current health care system and how it really functions, and be amazed at the haphazard way it came about and the profiteering that drives often anti-intuitive results.)
But it's something. BBC World Service's morning report on the historic measure contained a phrase that struck me as I drove to work today. The announcer, perhaps puzzled by the strong resistance to reform here, said it stemmed from "American exceptionalism," which he characterized as the belief that the United States doesn't have to do the things that the rest of the world does.
If there's one thing this recession has done, it's remind us working stiffs how close we are to the poverty that so many in the rest of the world - and here, for that matter - face. I for one am glad for any social safety net I can get.