from In These Times:
Features » April 16, 2010
Fixing The ‘Big F*%#ing Deal’Health insurers won the pot. Reformers need a new game plan.By Roger Bybee
In a too-loud whisper to President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden famously characterized the signing of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as “a big f—-ing deal” at a triumphal White House news conference.
On a political level, the new law is indeed a “BFD.” But in terms of healthcare policy, many reformers believe that the law fundamentally reinforces insurers’ stranglehold on affordability and access. Consequently, the law will fail to restrain the market forces inexorably driving up healthcare costs, thereby forcing another confrontation further down the road as costs climb and coverage shrinks.
Still, America’s first comprehensive health plan represents a step toward establishing healthcare as a basic American right. The new law includes an extension of healthcare to 32 million uninsured people, some valuable protections against insurer abuses, and a badly needed expansion of Medicaid and community health clinics.
Although it passed by a slim 219-212 margin in the House, the law for expanded healthcare prevailed over shrill and intransigent “free-market” fundamentalists like Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), who thundered against creating any “artificial” rights not directly mandated by God or the market. ..........(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5862/fixing_the_big_fing_deal