The Senate votes to bring affordable health care for Americans a huge step closer

IT WAS, critics and admirers agreed, the most consequential vote in the Senate for more than 40 years; since, in fact, the bill that created America’s state-run health scheme for the elderly back in 1965. On the morning of Christmas Eve, Barack Obama’s promise to deliver affordable health care to every American moved a giant leap closer to fulfillment as the chamber voted, on strictly party lines, in favour of a bill that has already been the best part of a year in the making.

The previous Democratic president, Bill Clinton, failed at the same task, and that failure marked the remaining seven years of his presidency. Universal health care has been the most cherished goal of Democratic politicians for close to a century; and now, the shameful fact that a country as rich and powerful as America leaves tens of millions of its citizens with only the most basic health care is on its way to being expunged. The bill still has tricky obstacles to negotiate before it ends up on the president’s desk. But Mr Obama can reflect, as 2009 comes to an end, that his place in the pantheon of American reformers looks secure. …