Is there anyone on this site who thinks there would have been even an attempt to pass anything like Obamacare into law if we had stuck to the original design of our government prior to the 17th amendment?
I do because I see it as a slow loss of our spirit, not in legal details on the separation of how the bodies represent. With the Senate as representatives of the State instead of another direct representation of the people (which is the role of the House) you may have had it in a different form and through a different mode, but it is the same loss of individualism that is growing in almost all first word, prosperous nations. Things come to easy, 'luxuries' can be voted on instead of earned. Heck, look at what Switzerland is on the verge of passing, a national 'dividend' which is basically a minimum salary every citizen gets for doing nothing except being a citizen. They don't need to earn it, it is not the result of a trade of goods or services, the sweat of one's brow or the challenge of the mind, nor the creation of anything new. No, it is the people simply realizing that assets can be gained if one simply demands in a large enough mass. This used to be done by cities and tribes raiding each other for property, now is done without breaking a sweat other than going to the ballot box. Things have gotten to easy, we are becoming again like babies nursing, not having to chew meat.
Robert Heinlein foretold this in two novels- For Us, The Living and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. The former predicting the almost exact economic structure that Switzerland is about to vote on (and not ironically enough, the socialist utopia that was the written goal of Cloward/Piven) and the latter being the natural result said utopia where there is the necessary slave type class (moon miners made up of 'anarchist' types who didn't want to conform) that has to support the luxury class back on earth. We are on the verge of the first and we are told how wonderful all these free things will be, but the necessity of the second to support the first will come all too quickly.