PARIS — I read the news about the passage of the House health care bill a continent away, on assignment in Europe. The distance did nothing to lift the weight on my heart, as the parent of a child with a pre-existing condition.

More than 20 years ago, when I sat keening in a hospital anteroom, after the scans and the somber looks and the clueless young intern who told me she would go home and cry for us, my family and I joined the ranks of the unlucky. A rare disease, a grim prognosis, a suffering child. May those who passed this bill never know what it is like to sleep and wake every day with an anvil pressed against your chest, tasting the terror, pushing it away so that you can comfort and care for both the sick and the well in your family.

First you endure the treatments harsh enough to kill, then the surgeries, the hospitalizations, the agonizing wait for the daily test scores, the frantic consultations with doctors and residents.