Maybe it’s better this way. With Barack Obama’s Healthcare Reform downgraded to "Insurance Reform" and with Single Payer, then Public Option, off the table, it all would have been a waste of time anyway.
And let’s be honest: Obama only waded into healthcare because Hillary Clinton and John Edwards made it an issue in the campaign. If not for them, it wouldn’t have been so central an issue for team Obama, if an issue at all.
So now comes new revelations that the economy is in even worse shape than the worse shape we thought, and, as the FT puts it:
"In particular, prospects for enacting Mr Obama’s proposed $1,000bn (€700bn, £610bn) 10-year expansion in healthcare coverage this autumn are beginning to look dicey given the projected rise in the national debt of more than $9,000bn in the next decade."
Rahm Emanuel’s sage words ring true: Never allow a crisis to go to waste. And so, this new crisis in the economy will be just the out Obama has been looking for to get the healthcare monkey off his back once and for all.
Expect him to use it to the hilt.