Historic Social Change
I'm not a health care expert, just a spectator like most of America. It's been said that watching legislation being made is like watching sausage being made. Thanks to the 24-hour news cycle, blogs, etc., we've all just been treated to 14 months of the stomach-turning process of watching legislation being made. This may account for the less-than-jubilant reaction to the enactment of health care reform into law.
Make no mistake, however. This is real, lasting, fundamental, historic social change, on a par with the creation of Social Security in the 1930s and Medicare in the 1960s. It ends the national shame of more than 40 million people without health insurance. It creates a system where everyone must play and everyone has a stake.
Health care reform is not a traditional safety net program. You don't get a card. But we live in a much more complicated world than we did in the 1930s or the 1960s. This reform had to be a accomplished within the confines and constraints of two of the most powerful industries in America--the pharmaceutical industry and the insurance industry. Health care reform succeeded because it builds on the existing health care structure to accomplish at least nine extraordinary goals:
- First and foremost, it creates a system of subsidies that will allow all people--adults, children, working, not working--to access affordable health insurance.
- It will protect people from financial ruin if they contract a disabling disease.
- It will prevent insurance companies from canceling insurance policies when the policyholder gets sick.
- It will provide workers with job mobility since insurance companies will no longer be permitted to deny coverage based on a preexisting condition.
- It will make insurance affordable for middle-income people through a system of subsidies.
- It will provide very low-income single adults with access to Medicaid.
- It will make it affordable for small businesses to provide health insurance to their workers.
- The doughnut hole will be eliminated and seniors will be able to afford their prescriptions.
- Young adults--an age group that is particularly likely to be uninsured--will be able to remain on their parents' insurance policies until they turn 26.
