Health care reform flopped face-first across the House finish line shortly before 11 p.m. March 21, an anniversary I hope proves more memorable than the forgotten March 19 shock-and-awe Iraq invasion seven years ago.

With 216 votes needed, there were 219 yes and 212 no (34 Democrats) on this historic night to send to President Obama.

Not one Republican voted for it. Nor are any known to have relinquished their access to a smorgasbord of the best plans money can buy out of their oft-spoken conviction we’re spending money we don’t have.

We came to this juncture because the for-profit market system failed the American people and left too many behind.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California ticked off Social Security, Medicare and “now, tonight, health care for all Americans. In doing so, we will honor the vows of our founders who, in the Declaration of Independence, said, ‘We are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’ ”

“Our economy needs a jolt,” she said, “I believe this legislation will unleash tremendous entrepreneurial power into our economy. Imagine a society and an economy where a person could change jobs without losing health insurance. Where they could be self-employed or start a small business. Imagine an economy where people could follow their passions and their talents without having to worry that their children would not have health insurance if they had a child with diabetes or who was bipolar. We all know that the present health care system and insurance system in our country is unsustainable. We simply cannot afford it. It is bankrupting the country with the upward spiral of increasing medical costs.”

“The best action,” she said, “that we can take on behalf of American family budgets and on behalf of the federal budget is to pass health care reform. The best action we can take to strengthen Medicare and improve care and benefits for our seniors is to pass this legislation tonight for health care reform. The best action we can do to create jobs and strengthen our economic security is pass health care reform. The best action we can take to keep America competitive, ignite innovation and, again, unleash entrepreneurial spirit is to pass health care reform” and cover another 32 million Americans.

“Those who have insurance now will be spared of being at the mercy of the health insurance industry with their obscene increases in premiums or rescinding of policies at the time of illness,” Pelosi said. “Make it more affordable for the middle class, end insurance company discrimination on pre-existing conditions, improve care and benefits under Medicare, extending Medicare solvency for almost a decade, creating a healthier America through prevention, wellness and innovation, create 4 million jobs in the life of the bill and doing all that by saving taxpayers $1.3 trillion.”

Updating Speaker Tip O’Neill’s adage that all politics is local, Pelosi recast it as all politics is personal when it comes to health care for all Americans.

“It’s personal for the family that has to choose between buying groceries and seeing a doctor,” she said. Or the family refused coverage for a child with a pre-existing condition. “Being a woman will no longer be a pre-existing condition,” she added. “It’s personal for millions of families who have gone into bankruptcy under the weight of rising health care costs. A high percentage of the bankruptcies in our country are caused by medical bills that people cannot pay. It’s personal for 45,000 Americans and their families who have lost a loved one each year because they couldn’t get health insurance.”

Finally, Pelosi invoked the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, “who made health care his life’s work.”

Access to health care, he wrote in a letter to Obama, “was the great unfinished business of our society.”

“That is, until today,” Pelosi said. “And by the way, the legislation that will go forth from here has over 200 Republican amendments. While it may not get Republican votes and be bipartisan in that respect, it is bipartisan …

“Today we have the opportunity to complete the great unfinished business of our society and pass health insurance reform for all Americans. It is a right and not a privilege.”

“What is at stake are not just details of policy, but the character of our country,” Kennedy also wrote in his letter.

“As our colleague John Lewis has said,” Pelosi added, “we may not have chosen the time, but the time has chosen us.”

Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, implored, “Do not further strike at the heart of the country and this institution with arrogance … we break our trust with Americans. If we pass this bill, there will be no turning back. It will be the last straw for the American people. In a democracy you can fully ignore the will of the people for so long … If we defy the will of our fellow citizens and pass this bill, we’re going to be held to account by those who have placed us in their trust. We will have shattered those bonds of trust.”

Think of all the money we’d have for health care had we not gone down that road to Baghdad or widened the one leading into Afghanistan.

Where were deficit hawks then?

President Bush inherited a $5.6 trillion surplus and turned it into a $3 trillion deficit.
Why it took so long to register is a mystery, but Democrats somehow finally grasped the truth staring them in the face all these months.

While they sat around the campfire singing “Kumbaya,” the GOP was sharpening points on those marshmallow sticks.

Republicans are going to whine about the lack of bipartisanship, obstruct, exaggerate and threaten no matter what they do, so they might as well do what the American people elected them in 2008.

You can look that up. Democrats won two years ago. Republicans’ ideas lost. John McCain and Sarah Palin did not inherit the White House because Americans had had enough of George W. Bush’s radical agenda of massive tax cuts for people who didn’t need them, a government takeover of education and an enormous, unfunded Medicare prescription drug program.

This moral imperative for the majority party to only operate in bipartisan fashion wasn’t born until moments after Republicans lost power.

Now here they are promising to fix what’s ailing Washington when they have waged a war of their own to discredit that government and to mire it in gridlock. They’re even talking about a new Contract on America. No leader. No message. No problem.

Midterm elections are a referendum on the party in power, so if you throw Democrats out, the Party of No returns to power.

The country has to continue falling apart for them to score political points. This cynical strategy has reached such absurd levels Republicans are voting against the conservative principles they profess to hold dear. They lined up against a stimulus package with tax cuts.
In February, they wanted to block pay-go budget rules they used to extol.

Senate Republicans rejected Obama’s efforts to create a bipartisan deficit commission almost identical to Bush’s.

John Eby is the Dowagiac Daily News managing editor. E-mail him at john.eby@leader pub.com.