Capital Digest

It's official. After a year of debate, health-care-reform legislation is dead, at least for this session.

George J. Mitchell, D-Maine, the Senate majority leader, announced at a news conference last week that there was insufficient time to fashion a compromise before the 103rd Congress adjourns, as it is set to do in the next two weeks.

President Clinton's ambitious effort to provide health coverage to millions of uninsured Americans was revised and pared by several Congressional committees before time ran out. The Senate could not muster enough votes to halt a filibuster on even a drastically scaled-down...