That's the takeaway from this interesting Tevi Troy commentary in Politico. Here's Troy:
Even if the Democrats succeed in the next couple of months in passing a health care overhaul, Congress will quite likely have to reopen the issue anyway. The Senate Democratic bill carries a high cost - $848 billion over the first 10 years. Since these costs will not go into effect until 2014, the actual cost over the first 10 years, beginning in 2014, is $1.8 trillion. Furthermore, some of the mechanisms used to make the bill appear deficit neutral are unrealistic, specifically the cuts in doctor fees, which the Congressional Budget Office doubts politicians will actually carry out. If, as the CBO surmises, Congress lacks the political wherewithal to keep the bill deficit neutral, we will have to reopen the issue because we will not be able to afford the additional spending that the bill requires. So either way, we will need to take another run at this issue in the relatively near future, very likely with a note of sobriety injected into the process. If round two comes after a Democratic loss, the failure and makeup of the new Congress stand a good chance of making the next attempt less far reaching. But even if round two comes after a legislative win for the Democrats, the realization that the bill's unsustainable costs prompted a reopening might also keep Congress from again overreaching on the cost side of things.
Troy is hopeful that, in the next round of debate, there will be bipartisan agreement on "reductions in Medicare's growth rate, a cap on the tax deductibility of 'Cadillac' insurance plans, and medical malpractice reform." Maybe. Call me cynical, but I think it's more likely that, whatever it is, the outcome of the Senate fight won't lessen partisan differences but will intensify them. RECOMMENDED READING ASIDE: Troy's brother Gil, a professor at Canada's Harvard, recently published an excellent brief analysis of the Reagan Revolution.