Keep tabs on health care

My column for the Daily News is online.  It’s called, “Keep tabs on health care.”  Here’s a portion:

Here’s where we are: The House Democrats won’t pass the Senate version of the bill because they don’t trust the Senate Democrats to pass a fix for it. The Senate Democrats won’t pass the fix because they don’t trust the House Democrats to pass the Senate version. It’s also problematic for the Senate Democrats to pass a fix for a bill that hasn’t been passed into law yet. President Obama is promising liberal House Democrats that they can vote for the Senate bill without a public option and they’ll “improve” it later even though the president has no ability to keep that promise with the current makeup of the Senate. A handful of pro-life House Democrats are refusing to pass the Senate version because it doesn’t include a ban on funding abortions. And all of the Democrats are refusing to scrap both bills and start over because they are afraid of being seen as unable to govern.

   Whew, got all that? There are some lessons here.

   First, the whole reason the Democrats are having so much trouble passing a bill is because it’s a steaming pile of, er, dreadful legislation that the public strongly opposes. It’s an election year. Many Democrats are looking at the polls and would like to remain in office after the election despite their leadership’s desire to sacrifice them on the altar of health care reform. Perhaps Democrats should learn a lesson about trying to shove through legislation that their constituents oppose.

   Second, huge pieces of legislation that dramatically change our relationship with government should be difficult to pass. Such gridlock is the result of the genius of our Founding Fathers. They built us a system where competing interests must align before major changes can happen. Such alignment hasn’t happened yet in the health care debate, which is a warning that it shouldn’t pass.

   Third, just look at how little trust there is between all of these politicians and remember that they know each other better than we know them. If they don’t trust each other, why should we trust them with our health care?