Why the Health Care Law Has Sparked a National Debate Over First Principles

“But over the past two years, ordinary Americans have come to realize that Washington’s political class—the politicians and their staffs and the armies of lawyers and lobbyists and consultants that intermingle with them routinely—really have become distant from them in mind and heart; they have become disconnected in so many ways. That mental and emotional distance had become glaringly evident on many topics, such as record spending and deficits, but none so clearly as in the long and bitter national debate on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA), the new national health care law.”