Will health care be as good, as bad as predicted?

After President Lyndon Johnson signed it into law, Harry Truman was the first to enroll in Medicare, 20 years after he suggested the program as the first step toward universal health coverage.

It's been nearly that long since President Clinton's failed attempt to establish universal health care.

The House passed health-care reform Saturday night, but only by 220 to 215, and only after Democratic leadership allowed an amendment to prevent coverage of abortion by any insurance plan that receives federal money.

It's on the Senate, where McCook native Sen. Ben Nelson is a key player, and has vowed not to support any government plan that will cover abortion.

There's no guarantee any provisions in the House bill will be included in the Senate version, or that provisions of either will survive the conference committee, if the Senate actually passes a bill.

But one issue shouldn't blind us to the pros and cons of the massive proposal.

Proponents hail the plan to extend coverage to 36 million people now without insurance while ending insurance company practices like not covering pre-existing conditions or dropping people when they become ill.

Opponents say the plan's cost, $1.1 trillion over 10 years, will bankrupt businesses just as they are recovering from recession, stifle growth through new fees and taxes and cut the Medicare upon which older Americans depend.

We still don't see any guarantee the plan addresses the main problem behind the call for health care reform -- climbing costs.

The HMO system of the '90s did accomplish that by shifting emphasis from a fee-for-service model to a managed care system, but HMO horror stories derailed most of those plans.

Managed care -- where providers are rewarded for keeping people healthy rather than for fixing them after they're sick -- should be revisited with an eye toward avoiding the arbitrary decisions insurers made in the first go-around.

Medicare was every bit as controversial in the days of Harry Truman and LBJ as is today's health care reform proposals, yet most of us now take it for granted.

We doubt any health care plan that comes out of Congress will be as good as its proponents claim. Neither, we fervently hope, will it be as bad as its detractors predict.