Funny how one election has thrown everything up in the air.

Of course I’m talking about the election of Scott Brown as the Republican senator from the bluest of states, Massachusetts, on January 19. The result has been that Democrats of all stripes are running scared, while Republicans can’t stop crowing about the renewed vigor that Brown’s victory has brought to their party.

I happened to be in Massachusetts the weekend before the election and believe me there was hardly any time for music on any station because the competing ads for Scott and his opponent, Martha Coakley, were going nonstop like some insanely repetitive, yet inescapable, loop.

Brown, as it happens, did not run as a Republican; indeed, he seemed at pains to mention his party affiliation at all.  No, he was an independent. 

One of Coakley’s ads, in fact, identified him as Republican Scott Brown as if this in and of itself was enough in the Bay State to ensure a politician’s defeat.  Sorry, Martha.

But think about it, have you heard much, if anything, about health care reform in the wake of Brown’s victory?  Compared to the nonstop barrage of news that kept coming out of Washington for close to a year, the silence on the issue after the Massachusetts verdict is not a little startling.

Of course, there’s probably a ton of stuff going on in the back rooms of the House and Senate and White House, but any clear sense of direction is not to be found.   Not even in the president’s State of the Union message.

If, as a result of this upset election, nothing or very little comes of nearly a whole year of trying to reform the health care system, there’s no doubt the president will take a body blow.  Even though he did a terrible job of leading the fight on the issue and never truly made it clear what exactly he wanted in the final bill, it is nonetheless the issue that has defined his first year in office.  And if it comes to nothing, what was all the sound and fury about?  And further, what about all the other pressing issues that were back-burnered so that health care reform could take precedence? 

Many people will be only too happy to see the end of any kind of health reform effort, but the fact remains that the system is not going to heal itself and the major problems that were there a year ago are still with us, only worse.

The silence that I referred to above has not only descended on Washington.  There’s been hardly any comment from the health insurance industry, the pharmaceutical business or health care providers.

The first two, in particular, had a lot to gain from reform because they were looking forward to millions of new customers paying premiums and buying prescription drugs.  That promised revenue went a long way toward easing the pain of some of the restrictions that the reform plans intended to put in place.

If some kind of “reform” is salvaged after all, it’s likely to be aimed at making changes that affect health insurance regulation.  Insurers could very well end up being subject to many of the restrictions that were in the grand schemes, but without the palliative effect of those millions of new customers.

Trying to forestall this result might be worth insurers bringing some verbal life support to health care reform now.  In fact, reiterating support of reform could well capture the imagination of the public and politicians to good effect.

Without making some noise now, is anybody going to care what they have to peep about later on?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 at 12:29 pm and is filed under health care reform, opinion, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.