It’s probably just the steady rains today in North Carolina, a welcome sight in a state that has been suffering a severe drought for months, but I’m feeling especially ebullient this afternoon. I feel so optimistic that if someone asked me what I think was likely to happen in health-care policy in the next couple of years, I’d respond by predicting that President Clinton’s massive Medicare expansion/insurance mandate bill of 2009 will fall short of passage in the U.S. Senate by a 51-49 margin, with eight of the 57 Democrats abandoning her for fear that the bill would cost too much and encroach on the prerogatives of the nation’s 32 Democratic and 18 Republican governors.