Even with all its flaws and compromises, President Obama's health plan represented a long-sought victory for those who believe that health insurance is the missing link in our social safety net. And he accomplished this where all other presidents before him had failed, including the likes of FDR, Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton.
The successful passage of this legislation has brought howls of outrage from Tea Party activists and Republicans who were quite happy to whip up their base until audience members at a Tea Party sponsored debate cheered at the prospect of letting an uninsured person, who was in a coma die, rather than receive services at state expense. That was a little too callous even for the Republican leadership, and the heated rhetoric simmered down for a while.
That is until conservatives saw an opening when the administration recently released rules requiring all nonprofits affiliated with a religious organization to provide preventive care, including birth control. This led to more protests against state interference and on behalf of "religious freedom," even though no church, mosque, or other house of worship was required to provide this coverage, just religiously-affiliated hospitals, schools, and universities.
This latest scuffle over the health care plan was a mere tempest in a teapot compared to earlier protests, but it obscured a very important point. Beginning January 1, 2013 almost all women will have access to birth control at no additional charge through their employer plans, and this preventive screening package will also include HIV screening and support for breast-feeding mothers.
It's true that the new health care act provisions may have contributed slightly to increased premiums but most of the 9% (yes, nine percent) rise in health insurance costs from 2010 to 2011 came from (guess what) the rising cost of health care.
In addition, preventive medicine actually saves health care dollars (and lives). If more people know they have HIV, we can slow the spread of this disease, especially among the young and in communities of color. If more women are able to breastfeed their babies at work, those children are less likely to be obese and will benefit from a whole range of other health effects.
In this Great Recession, college graduates who can't find a job have been able to stay on their parents' health insurance until they reach the age of 26, and seniors have seen less and less of the infamous "donut hole" in their Medicare Part D coverage. And that doesn't even include children who can't be excluded from health coverage because of pre-existing conditions, small business tax-credits that encourage employers to offer health insurance, and the end of life-time limits on insurance policies.
Instead of running from his health care legislation, President Obama should be out talking to every person who now has health care coverage, or who has managed to keep their coverage because of Obamacare. If I were Obama, I would make "Obamacare" a badge of honor rather than a mark of shame, and I would be hailing every success of Mitt Romney's health insurance initiative in Massachusetts as an indication of what could be accomplished when the law is fully implemented in 2014.
1 comment:
Right on, Beth! I wish he'd started with a more emphatic leftward position rather than something he thought was realistic, because obviously, he was going to be pilloried no matter what he did. The compromises are real. However, the benefits are also real, and I think more people are going to realize it. We need more communication and education about it. Own it, O!
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