A Measured Step Towards Health Care For All

Well, it’s finally happened. Congress has passed health care reform. Now what will happen? Truthfully, no one knows for sure. But that hasn’t stopped the right wing crazies and their enablers Fox News and Rush Limbaugh from telling us. They say that the passage of this socialist takeover of healthcare means we are on an inevitable path to communism. Uncle Sam will choose your doctor for you. The IRS will hunt you down and bankrupt you if you don’t sign up for health insurance. The American public will rise up in anger and throw out the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.

Has Armageddon arrived? Hardly. The dirty little secret is that many on the left are as dissatisfied with this bill as the right. This legislation is nothing like the single payer programs that Canada and Britain have. Healthcare in this country will still be mostly provided by employers, and through private health insurance carriers. The major change is that most people who now don’t have access to health insurance will be able to get it. Folks will no longer be denied coverage due to having a preexisting medical condition. Young adults will be able to stay on their parents’ insurance until they get their own coverage. As for the penalties for not getting health insurance, many worry that the penalties in the bill are so SMALL that many will simply pay them rather than comply.

The Obama health care bill is a compromise first step in making sure everyone has access to affordable health care. This law is actually very similar to the Republican proposal offered as the alternative to “Hillarycare” in the 90s. The process of passing it was ugly and sometimes distasteful. But it is a tremendous step forward in providing a higher quality of life for all Americans. The same criticisms made of this process were made of other dramatic improvements like Medicare, Medicaid, Civil Rights and Womens Suffrage. Many of the legislators who voted against those landmarks later wished they hadn’t. I applaud the 219 brave souls who put their careers on the line to vote in favor of real progress. Some of them may suffer at the polls this fall. But history will see them as visionaries.