Alarmism is setting in about the health reform bill. "Alliances In Health Debate Splinter," says the Washington Post. "House healthcare plan to add to deficit: analysts," says Reuters, echoing earlier stories about Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf's congressional testimony last week that health reform would be a budget-buster. President Obama's approval ratings are slipping, and public approval of his handling of the health care issue has for the first time dropped below 50 percent. Slate warns readers on its home page, "We're About To Make a Huge Mistake on Health Care." Or maybe health reform is already dead because the Senate finance committee is dithering and six moderate senators are urging the Democratic leadership to slow things down further. Bill Kristol, who helped strangle Hillarycare in its crib, smells blood.

Never mind that the health reform bill last week cleared three congressional committees (two more to go!) and that the House bill, which is more liberal than the bill approved by Sen. Ted Kennedy's health, education, labor and pensions committee, was endorsed unexpectedly last week by the American Medical Association. While it would certainly be more convenient for health reform to clear Congress before the August recess, a failure to do so, which is looking increasingly likely, will hardly be the devastating setback that's widely supposed. The New Republic's Jonathan Cohn worries that the recess will provide "four long weeks in which special interests can bang away at legislation, running ads and ginning up grassroots opposition." But it will also provide four long weeks in which supporters of health care reform, whose numbers and union backing are not inconsiderable, can bang away at legislators who aren't supporting health reform.