Today's selection of opinions and editorials

The Incredible, Shrinking Health Care Overhaul USA Today
For now it appears that Washington's polarizing ways, and public anxiety about change, have again left Americans with the most expensive, least reliable health care system in the developed world. No matter who you are, that's hardly cause to celebrate (1/21).

Health Care Irony In Massachusetts The Dallas Morning News/The Providence Journal 
If you don't have the courage of your convictions, it doesn't matter whether your party has 59 or 60 or 65 seats in the Senate (Froma Harrop, 1/20).

Who Really Understands ObamaCare? Kaiser Health News
From the very moment public opinion started going south on the president's health plan, the White House and Democrat leaders in Congress began sounding a familiar refrain: The public does not understand the bill; they've been lied to, deceived and misled by the opponents; and once they learn how it really works, familiarity will breed ... well, something other than contempt (John Goodman, 1/21).

RomneyCare Revisited The Wall Street Journal
Democrats are now bemoaning their new powerlessness to ram ObamaCare through Congress with a partisan majority, but they're the ones who were on the verge of imposing social legislation so controversial and complex that it could only pass by one vote in the first place. Now the country has a second chance to learn from Massachusetts's 2006 mistake — and this time, let us hope, not by imitation (1/21).

What The Results In Massachusetts Mean The New York Times
It's very hard to write when one is crouched in a fetal position under the bed. Maybe if I remove the pillow from over my head. … Better. About the Massachusetts election. I am not going to try to argue that losing Ted Kennedy's Senate seat wasn't a big loss for Barack Obama. It was huge. Larger even than the immense dustball that's right here next to my head (Gail Collins and David Brooks, 1/20).

No Turning Back On Health Reform The Minneapolis Star Tribune
Despite the topic's complexity, the answer remains straightforward. ... The costly, wasteful U.S. health care system is an embarrassment. The right thing to do — the moral imperative — is to fix it (1/20).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.