I have a column up at Kaiser Health News about why the passage of Obamacare marks the beginning of the health care debate.

An excerpt:

And speaking of abortion, it’s fitting that in the final hours, the outcome of the vote hinged on the issue. While many saw abortion as tangentially related to the health care debate, in reality the dispute is central to it, and a harbinger of things to come.

The expansion of government’s role in health care will elevate the importance of social issues and trigger contentious battles in the future over the government’s role in personal decisions. Given that abortion is a legal procedure in a free market, government cannot restrict private policies from covering it. But once ostensibly private policies are regulated by the federal government and subsidized with tax dollars, Washington has a say in the matter.