By Robert Scheer
Boy, the Republicans know how to make Barack Obama look good. What are they going to do now, threaten to repeal a law that forces insurance companies to cover the sick? Or block the provision that allows you to keep your out-of-work kids on your policy until they are 26? Whatever the failings of the bill—and they are real, especially in the area of cost control—its proponents will clearly have an advantage over those left bemoaning the loss of the untenable status quo. Particularly so during the first years, when its very sensible restraints on the insurance industry go into effect.
The bill that the president signed into law is limited and hardly provocative, but it unquestionably gets us over the first huge hurdle, already surmounted by every other economically advanced nation, to finally regard health coverage as a societal obligation. We already do with the rules governing admittance to hospital emergency rooms, but now that obviously humane assurance carries the majesty of landmark law. For that achievement, Obama and the Democrats who supported him have secured their marker in the nation’s history, and the Republicans, without exception, should be remembered only as wannabe spoilers.
Read the entire article at Truthdig…
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