The fight over ObamaCare is only beginning

Well, that's over. Now we can get on to other issues such as amnesty for illegals and cap and trade legislation to nationalize the energy industry.

Not so fast, speedy. Sunday's health insurance takeover vote is just the beginning. Now the real fight begins.

As Fred Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard and a Fox News commentator, predicted this past week in a Wall Street Journal article, the wrangling over the finances will be eternal.

Just look at the perennial tussle over the so called "doc fix." Congress created a formula for doctor reimbursement to make Medicare sustainable but every year rejects the formula's cut in reimbursement and writes an IOU to keep rates at an unsustainable level.

The doc fix was to cut Medicare payments 21 percent this year and 23 percent next year. The cost to prevent that is not in the ObamaCare bill. That would've forced the CBO to score the bill as causing an increase in the deficit.

Barnes wrote, "America will be in a constant health-care war if ObamaCare is enacted. Passage wouldn't end the health-care debate. Rather, it would perpetuate ObamaCare as the dominant issue for decades to come, reshape politics, create an annual funding crisis in Congress, and generate a spate of angry lawsuits. Yet few in Washington seem aware of what lies ahead."

Then there's that court fight.

Three states have passed anti-ObamaCare laws and others may follow. There may be suits over how the bill was shoved through Congress. There may be suits over the constitutionality of the bill itself.

Tennessee Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn, a Republican, of course, described the future:

"My colleagues celebrate this day as being like the days when Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid were passed. They forget that today those programs are insolvent and will likely crush our children under their debt.

"My colleagues are overjoyed that soon their goal of having Americans dependent on the Federal Government for mortgages, student loans, retirement, and health care will be realized. That is a chilling goal.

"Freedom dies a little bit today. Unfortunately some are celebrating."

There is no way out. Even if the Republicans, buoyed by the angry right, can take over both houses of Congress this fall and repeal ObamaCare in January, Obama would just veto the repeal and chances of a veto-proof Congress are remote at best. No, it becomes an entrenched bureaucracy like Social Security, Medicare, the Department of Education and you-name-it. It will never die. People become addicted to free money. It becomes a birthright. Even Margaret Thatcher could not get rid of nationalized British health can, and we have no one her mettle on the horizon.

  It is the end of prosperity.