Is it time to pull the plug on the current healthcare bill?

When the Democrats stormed back to power beginning in 2006, progressives crowed about a victory by the “reality-based” community.

They promised an era of good governance, transparency, and common sense that would wash away the worst excesses of the Bush era.

Their first grand effort is the healthcare reform package, now circling the drain following the election of Sen. Scott Brown (R-Massachusetts) this week.

His upset victory puts the legislation in dire political peril.

But there’s also a growing amount of evidence that it’s just not a very good effort at solving a big problem.

It’s too expensive, too bureaucratic, and too many of the benefits are deferred for too long.

Unlike many critics, I think there’s a reasonable argument to be made that the worst aspects of the bill emerged as a result not of partisanship, but misguided conciliation.

If you want to reform a massive chunk of our economy — much of it subsidized by taxpayers — you need a vision, a plan, a coherent set of guiding principles.

Instead, the White House left it to the sausage factory of Congress to sort out.

Not a wretched idea, given the fate of the Clinton health effort, but it just didn’t work.

Lawmakers got lost in the deal-making and the fine-print.

Democrats deserve a ton of blame for this dead-end, but so do Republicans, who have taken to simply denying that the healthcare industry is in crisis.

They’re wrong.

The cost of the current system is spiraling out of control and so far the private sector hasn’t come up with real solutions, leaving tens of millions of Americans unprotected.

But Democrats own this. The next logical step is for them to admit defeat, regroup and begin again.

Democratic leaders should go back and negotiate in good faith with moderates in their own party to determine how far reform legislation can go this year.

Then they should unify and tell that story to the American people.

I’m guessing that broad consensus can be reached eliminating the worst insurance industry excesses, allowing governments to negotiate prescription drug prices more aggressively, and expanding coverage to the uninsured significantly.

Democrats should also include good conservative ideas, including reasonable tort reform and interstate competition for insurance companies.

Frankly, I think it’s a mistake to begin the process by courting Republicans.

Develop a good bill, using bipartisan ideas, then win over the American people. Do that and reasonable members of the GOP will join the process.

But the first step is developing a coherent, workable bill.

If this is, indeed, a reality-based moment for American government, the Democrats should prove that now by scrapping this mess and starting fresh.