Congress is making impressive progress toward reducing America's uninsured population, but there's growing reason to believe that new health reforms will do little to constrain costs in the short-run and minimal confidence it will significantly bend the cost increase curve over the longer period.

The message is clear -- even tools that experts say are too modest to get the job done are the subject of ongoing opposition . Optimists who report impressive results think systemic change will take decades .

It is possible that the bill could implement constructive changes over the next decade and equally possible, given the girth of the legislation, that there are some positive surprises that won't be fully understand until well after enactment

But two popular short-term strategies are underwhelming.

Playing the role of Dreamaway ("the popular plan that allows you to eat all you want and lose weight while you sleep") in this legislative drama is the highly polarizing but seldom understood public plan. Proponents argue that by simply subjecting commercial in