The drive to reform US healthcare is speeding up. Plans have emerged from Congress and Barack Obama is calling for rapid action. Last week he told Senate Democrats that the next two months would be “make or break”.

The president still says he wants bipartisan agreement, but plans are afoot to get the job done without it. So what was once regarded as impossible – comprehensive reform of US healthcare – seems likely to happen. The question now is whether the country will like it when it gets it. The administration has learnt the lessons of the Clintons’ failed reform of the 1990s, but perhaps too well. The designers of “Hillarycare” left Congress out of the process, which Congress did not care for. This time the White House has not merely engaged Congress in a joint effort, it has surrendered the entire project.