A Perfect Health Care Reform Bill???

Congress will never achieve the perfect bill in seeking to enact true health care reform for the benefit of all Americans. But that will be OK.

Indeed, that will be just fine.

When the 1787 Constitutional Convention was in its last day, and still there remained deep divides among the delegates Benjamin Franklin penned these words and, too weak to actually deliver the speech, asked fellow Pennsylvanian James Wilson to deliver his words. Here are selected lines from his speech:

"Mr. President –

I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them: For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. ..

It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others. Most men indeed as well as most sects, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them it is so far error.

...I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us…

…I doubt, too, whether any other Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution. For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected?

…It, therefore, astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded like those of the Builders of Babel; and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another's throats.

Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best…"

It is my hope that at least one representative in Congress will rise this fall to repeat Mr. Franklin’s words for the benefit of all his colleagues…and that each will bear Mr. Franklin’s words in mind as he casts a vote in favor of health care reform.