It's estimated that a million voters peppered Congress with letters, emails and phone calls. That helped President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi get the job done along with some hand holding and assurances on Federal funding of abortion (already clearly forbidden by previous measures). It's too bad that health care reform has been held hostage to anyone with a particular issue. This is big (as the Vice President said in so many words) and we need to continue to act boldly to assure that everyone gets good health care just because they are a citizen of the world's most advanced democracy with the biggest economy. There's something crazy about a society that provides gigantic payouts and great health care coverage to executives, movie stars and athletes, but denies the most basic human dignity to the working poor. And there's something crazy about denying coverage to immigrants who work in restaurants and other places with direct contact with the public. Don't we want them to be healthy?
Democrats need to prepare to work hard this November if we want to keep our majority and answer the dishonest characterizations of the legislation that the right keeps feeding our citizens. Interestingly capitalism was not destroyed by this law. The very next day after the vote the stock market rose on the good news for health care businesses.
No comments:
Post a Comment