I have painful memories of the Clintons' efforts to reform health insurance back in 1993 and of the fierce and aggressive opposition and push back to the plan from within the GOP and the media that materialized and coalesced into a solid block of resistance pretty much immediately and, in the end, helped along by "Blue Dog" Dems, the Clinton reform initiative essentially went nowhere fast. I can't recall it being brought up for a final vote or if it even made it out of any committees. The important point being that, as admirable as their efforts were, health insurance reform just didn't go anywhere then or for the next 16 years since.
Flash foward to now, I actually thought that President Obama and Congress have been making steady, albeit slow, progress towards passing reform that meets the principles outlined by President Obama at the outset and bills are actually getting reported out of committees and Pelosi theoretically even has the votes to get something passed in the House. The major delay, of course, has been the Senate (as usual), which has been engaged in a lot of negotiations and discussions to attempt to address "Blue Dog" and GOP concerns but even there I had the sense that some progress is/was being made and I have, overall, been fairly optimistic that we will see some kind of reform by the time Congress recesses for the year. Although there has certainly been opposition to the emerging/probable plans, President Obama has been able to bring some former opponents of health insurance reform (i.e. AMA) into his fold and the central debate has seemed to have been whether or not to push for single-payer or for a more limited "public option"- as President Obama has been proposing.
Starting this week, however, it seems that the media and GOP have suddenly changed the overall tone and narrative of the debate to something significantly more dramatic and serious by declaring that health care reform is now in peril and that even the future of Obama's Presidency and his ability to get things done is even at stake based on spurious and IMHO convenient polling data showing that health insurance reform efforts and President Obama's popularity is losing steam. The GOP, led by people like DeMint and Inhofe aren't even concealing their glee over the possible death of health insurance reform this year and the boost they believe that such a failure will give them for next year's midterm elections, DeMint even going so far yesterday as to have his own "mission accomplished" moment and crowing that President Obama has been defeated. All this despite the fact that the GOP essentially has NO plan (or at least a plan that they might not bother releasing because, according to Roy Blunt, people might be confused????) and that they appear to be focused on killing any kind of health insurance reform simply for political gain (actually, they're not really being all that subtle about it this time around).
Harry Reid has made prospects for health insurance reform prospects even more questionable by declaring that there will be NO vote in the Senate for health insurance reform before the upcoming August Recess. I can only hope that he is doing this so as to give people an opportunity to turn the screws on their Representatives and, especially, Senators, as well as to dispel the IMHO spurious notion that President Obama and the Democrats are trying to "ram something through" and "not listening to Republicans" In the end, giving some more time may, in retrospect, may be a good thing if, as President Obama said, they continue to seriously and genuinely work on health insurance reform, particularly if it gets more Democrats on board with health insurance reform, and/or if does nothing more than provide further impetus for President Obama and Reid to simply give up on "bipartisanship" in the US Senate and concentrate on getting something through with or WITHOUT Republican support.