Health Care Overhaul's Uncertain, Super-Majority-Free Future

Jan. 21, 2010— -- With Republican Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts on Tuesday, Republicans in the Senate captured a seat long held by Democrats, and, perhaps more importantly, the possible 41st vote necessary to filibuster any new health care bill.

But while the future of a health care overhaul remains unclear, experts are divided as to how to read the tea leaves in public opinion on the issue following a vote from a state that already has universal health care. Brown, then a state senator, voted in favor of the measure when the Massachusetts legislature passed it in 2006.

Brown has vowed to halt the current version of health care reform, passed by the Senate on Dec. 24, saying he did not think the current plan was a good one for the country -- or Massachusetts.

"We already have 98 percent of our people insured here," Brown said Wednesday afternoon, repeating one of his campaign themes. "We know what we need to do to fix it. But to have the one-size-fits-all plan that is being pushed nationally -- it doesn't work."

Experts were split on whether health care overhaul could continue forward at this point.

"President Obama's already unpopular health plan didn't lose just one vote in the Senate. It lost maybe a handful of votes in the Senate and perhaps a dozen or more in the House," said Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute.

"Antipathy toward the Obama plan was the number one reason for Brown's victory, and that has vulnerable Democrats in Congress running scared," he said. "They are now far more likely to vote against the Obama plan, particularly since the elections in New Jersey and Massachusetts show that Obama can't help them on the campaign trail."

But others disagree.

"Health reform is not doomed. It just depends who does it," said Uwe Reinhardt, a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University. "The task will always be much, much more difficult for Democrats, because they are suspected of plotting government hegemony just breathing. It is much simpler for Republicans to do the same thing."