Uber-wingnut Mark Steyn looks down the long, dark road beyond the passage of health care reform and sees utter doom:
it's hard to overestimate the magnitude of what the Democrats have accomplished. Whatever is in the bill is an intermediate stage:...the governmentalization of health care will accelerate, private insurers will no longer be free to be "insurers" in any meaningful sense of that term (ie, evaluators of risk), and...we'll be on the fast track to Obama's desired destination of single payer...
If Barack Obama does nothing else in his term in office, this will make him one of the most consequential presidents in history. It's a huge transformative event in Americans' view of themselves and of the role of government...Their bet is that it can't be undone, and that over time...governmentalized health care not only changes the relationship of the citizen to the state but the very character of the people....there's plenty of evidence to support that from Britain, Canada, and elsewhere.
...one of the first things that middle-rank powers abandon once they go down this road is a global military capability....Five years from now, just as in Canada and Europe two generations ago, we'll be getting used to announcements of defense cuts to prop up the unsustainable costs of big government at home...
So health care reform will not just extend medical care to 32 million additional Americans who can't afford it. It will also change how Americans see government - not as the problem that needs to be shrunk down and drowned but as a provider of solutions that can make their lives better and easier. The way people in other developed countries see their governments. It will shift priorities from military to domestic spending. And it will bring an end to America's adventure in empire.
From your keyboard to God's ears, Mark Steyn.