In the past, the insurance industry’s power has been a major barrier to health-care reform. Most notably, the industry paid for the infamous "Harry and Louise" ads that helped kill the Clinton plan. But times have changed.

Last weekend, the lobbying organization America’s Health Insurance Plans, or AHIP, released a report attacking the reform plan just passed by the Senate Finance Committee. Some news organizations gave the report prominent, uncritical coverage. But health-care experts quickly, and correctly, dismissed it as a hatchet job. And the end result of AHIP’s blunder may be a better bill than we would otherwise have had.

For 2009, it turns out, is not 1993. Once again, Republicans have tried to kill reform with smears and scare stories. But all...