President Obama addresses Congress on health care reform. The aim of the speech was to persuade lawmakers into approving the health care overhaul that has eluded Washington for 65 years.

America is involved in a great debate about whether and how to universalise healthcare coverage. Bipartisan support is a non-starter in the House, if not less so in the Senate, Almost to a person, the Republican political leadership is hostile to the state expanding its healthcare obligations. The Republicans have said they can turn healthcare reform into Obama's "Waterloo", that they can "break him" by destroying the prospects for real change. Why Waterloo rather than trench warfare?

So will it be a sort of political compromise?