Health Care--what is next?

Now that health care, make that health insurance, reform is on the way to becoming a reality, where is it going next? Certain inevitabilities can be expected:

1. Republicans will try to repeal whatever form the final bill takes. They have invested too much venom and lies in their anti-campaign to face the possibility that
it may work out well. That would represent their total repudiation, with disastrous
effects at election time.

2.When the final bill is signed and becomes law, the agencies that opposed it and who will be charged with conforming with its provisions, such as insurance companies, will find many opportunities to make mischief, even sabotage, to gain
advantages the law sought to take away.

3. No matter how carefully planned, no law can anticipate unintended consequences.
These will provide grist for the mills of the nay-sayers. Only when the beneficial
results for the millions of victims of the present system become evident will those ill-wishers be silenced. That may take a while, but as it happened with Social Security and Medicare, so will it happen with health reform. A decade from now I predict not a single opponent of the reform will advocate retracting it.

4. The predicted costs will be greater, and deficit reductions much less. Government
operates through bureaucracies which inevitably develope a life of their own and
a self perpetuating constituency. If the benefits far exceed the costs, the
program will succeed. That is likely to occur in a program of such vital importance to the life and health of our nation. How healthy it would be if everyone united
in good faith to make it succeed!