Health care reform

The recent passage of American health care reform, which has emboldened Democrats and infuriated Republicans (alternate camps don't seem to feel anything), is not revolutionary--falling short, as it does, of the public option--though it has set in motion a tremendous force which will not be realized until bolder, less compromising legislation is passed. This future legislation is, of course, universal health care, a utopian dream towards which we are either blissfully or recklessly drifting, according to whom you ask.

Many, presumably driven by post-Red Scare paranoia, fear the new bill will culminate in some form of socialism (though I sooner expect it will culminate in more half-baked definitions of socialism). Other naysayers bristle at what they believe is an overt government takeover, a state of intolerable federal intrusion into states rights, private enterprise, and private lives. They feel particularly zealous about "reclaiming" their country, as though it were hijacked. More subtle critics worry about the government's increasing deficit, its solvency, the expansion of the welfare state, and the future quality of health care under the new bill.

Just as the financial viability of this bill relies on variables, so must our long-term vision remain visionary, not conclusive. We can at least conceive that more people will live longer as a result of this legislation. Among the existential possibilities of a longer life without the anxiety over affordable health care is the opportunity for individual and political empowerment. As the most democratic social reform in recent decades, the bill has the power to level inequalities while curtailing the concentration of money and authority into few hands. In political theater, it may recast the dominant parties as, in the case of Democrats, legitimate agents of progressive change, and in the case of Republicans, poor swimmers in the new political tide. All of this, however, remains uncertain, so long as demagogues from each side continue to shun bypartisanship, and the reality of the dream remains dream-like.