Health reform is now law, and world hasn't ended

It's coming closer, closer — boo! It's here.

Now everyone stop and look around for a second. Has the sky fallen? Are the birds no longer chirping? The health care reform bill is now the law of the land. But the stars are still in place, and Earth remains in its orbit.

Health care is an enormously sensitive subject. It is infused with animation, passion and worry because it can be life or death. It is powerful for other reasons. It represents 17 percent of the American economy, and people have become wealthy caring for their less-fortunate fellow human beings. Others have jobs creating pills, selling Band-Aids, renting equipment or filling hospital beds. There is also a whole bureaucracy built around the way we have always done things. It is an apple cart of astronomical proportions, and now it's overturned. Life and death aside, some of the hostility to the law is because it is no longer business as usual for insurance companies, pharmaceutical corporations and health systems.

I am not trying to make large, profitable corporations bogeymen; they have played by the rules of the day. Now the rules have changed — some to their advantage and some to their disadvantage. But they are led by smart people and employ a ton of lawyers, so they will come out just fine. I am, however, happy for the millions who were unable to obtain health insurance who now will be covered. The new trumps the old way of exclusion and uninsurability due to cost and pre-existing conditions.

I tried to read some of the thousands of pages of the bill and fell asleep. The slumber was probably similar to the stupor most of the lawmakers must have felt as they slugged through the tome. No doubt there will be egregious new rules and silly regulations. But these warts have yet to appear, and they may or may not be as ugly as everyone is predicting. But the debate revealed the fundamental difference between America's political poles. The right doesn't like people telling it what to do, and the left likes to tell people how to do it.

To the outcries of righteous indignation that this legislative package was ramrodded through the chambers of the Capitol, the only answer is a reminder that each side over the years has used exactly the same horse trading, the same power pushes and heavy-handedness. There is no innocence on either side of the aisle, and for the opposition to wrap themselves around this thinly veiled hypocrisy diminishes their credibility.