i’m over it

really happy you passed health care and all. but, there's work to be done.

I was hoping to tap into my creative juices to pen something poignant about health care reform.

You know, history in the making and all that good stuff. But the more I tried, the less successful I became. And then I realized that after a year and half of reading and writing about health care reform, I’m over it.

As much as I wanted to be excited about watching the Democrats pull off  the “unthinkable” last night, it really was a pretty forgettable experience.

I kept flipping back and forth between CNN and the Discovery Channel, which was airing Life, another one of the network’s really amazing series about the planet’s animal inhabitants.

The latter won out every time.

I found the rolling pebble toad way more interesting than lawmakers offering their perspectives on the health care bill. While I was waiting for the commercials on Discovery to end, I’d go back to CNN only wonder why Congress hadn’t just passed the dog-on bill already.

The epilogues, the monologues, the wrap-ups, the summaries. It all sounded like incessant babbling after a while. And really all it amounted to was pouting on the Republican side and a lot of self-congratulating from Democrats.

The last Dem holdout, the anti-abortion proponent Rep. Bart Stupak, even went as far as giving his wife a shout-out for standing by him during such a difficult time and for handling all his calls.

Seriously?

I know reform has been a long time coming, and that getting this bill passed is pretty big deal. But the background noise of the health care debate became a bit too distracting. I heard a lot of talking, but nearly all the politicians who spoke yesterday sounded like Charlie Brown’s teacher to me.

Let’s get on with implementing some of the changes contained in the bill, shall we? Even if things start moving now, most Americans won’t reap the benefits included in the reform until 2014. I, for one, desperately need that pre-existing conditions clause to kick in like yesterday.

But this week will likely be marked by more health care drama. Already shouts of “baby killer” have been hurled across the House floor by the GOP. And Democrats will undoubtedly offer countless sound bytes about the “long, hard road to health care reform.”

The regurgitated language we’ll hear every day this week is TV at its most self-indulgent, and while lawmakers keep kicking sand in each other’s eyes, there’s a nation of millions (Tea Partiers included) who need to get this health care show on the road.