The administration's own health department, in a devastating analysis, warns of rising costs, shrinking benefits and a long-term health care "death spiral." "Reform" has been pronounced dead.

When even the liberal Washington Post warns that congressional Democrats, in trying to save their increasingly unpopular health reform bill, are sneakily making it more like European-style socialized medicine, it means the death watch is on.

The president can talk about enactment before Christmas all he wants; the fact is that the more that information gets disseminated about this ever-shape-shifting nightmare of a plan, the more the American people fear it. The IBD/TIPP Poll pegs public support at 41%; Gallup gauges its popularity at just 35%.

Now comes the final, fatal blow: a report from the chief actuary of the Department of Health and Human Services' Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that says health "reform" will mean the opposite of its advertised promises.

But isn't it all worth it to insure the uninsured? Actually, after Congress and the president get through wrecking the finest health care system in the world, there would remain "an estimated 24 million" Americans still without health insurance 10 years from now.

Think of it: We're increasing health care costs in America, cutting services and "jeopardizing access" for Medicare patients as we accelerate Medicare's insolvency, setting up a new government long-term care entitlement that's doomed from the start — and after all that we still end up with 24 million uninsured!

Little wonder Rasmussen now scores the president's approval as only 44% — historically dismal for the end of a first year in office.

The White House is now so desperate to save face and pass something — anything — it wants Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to cut a deal with independent Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, a Democrat unsuccessfully targeted for destruction by his own party in 2006 for insisting that America win the Iraq war.

So Congress' "reform" is dead. Long live the real reform that its death can bring if ideas based on expanding freedom and consumer choice — not government control — are seriously considered.