As one doomed healthcare plan dies, another begins.

>>THELOCALSPIN

Following the death-by-veto of state Sen. Sheila Kuehl’s universal healthcare bill last week, the lead sentence of a story in Tuesday’s New York Times seemed almost pathetic: “A federal advisory panel said Monday that Congress should take immediate steps to guarantee that all Americans have access to affordable healthcare by 2012.”

The piece reported on the findings of the Citizens’ Healthcare Working Group, which was created in 2003. “It should be public policy, written in law,” the bipartisan panel decreed, “that all Americans have affordable access to healthcare.”

Maybe this report will give some hope to the 45 million uninsured Americans, or to the lucky families who spend, on average, close to $1,000 per month on health insurance. Probably not.

The healthcare crisis has become so acute it is inflicting grave damage to the economy.

National health insurance is an idea that has been stalled for a long time. First proposed by Pres. Harry Truman in 1945, the idea has come and gone from the political agenda, surfacing most recently with the spectacular crash-and-burn of the Clinton administration’s effort in 1993. If the Working Group is able to succeed, it will have to overcome even bigger problems than those that stymied past leaders.

The battlefield has moved to the states. Kuehl’s bill was the latest in a series of moves by state lawmakers to tackle an issue that the federal government does not seem to be able to cope with. Massachusetts this year passed a law both requiring all residents to purchase health insurance and offering inexpensive, state-subsidized policies. Hawaii and Maine have instituted programs that offer near-universal health insurance. Similar plans have been proposed, and have failed, in 26 other states. Meanwhile, the ranks of the uninsured have ballooned—there are 1.3 million more uninsured this year than last.

Most Americans rely on employer-provided plans. In the past five years, the number of firms offering benefits has dipped from 69 percent to 61 percent.

The healthcare crisis has become so acute it is inflicting grave damage to the economy. Big and small companies now devote substantial resources to providing heathcare. In addition to causing real pain in millions of American households, this situation puts US industries at a competitive disadvantage in the global economy.