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There's a lot of back&forth inside jousting on the particulars of the current bill. It's annoyed me from day one, since it's all backwards and inside-out. The media has hyped "HCR" legislation as a "make or break" benchmark for Obama's administration. But the truth of it is, we could never have gotten and will never get the kind of reform a lot of us here would have liked to see without a constitutional amendment.
What kind of amendment? Simple: Being essential to the self-evident human rights of Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness, access to adequate ongoing health care is a right of every person living in the USA, from birth to death. Period.
Without that, everything else is hogwash. That which is granted through the legislative process can be removed by way of the same. A constitutional amendment would provide recourse in the courts, when an insurance company jacks rates through the roof or pulls a pre-existing condition denial on a patient in an under-regulated environment. Furthermore, it paves the way to the single-payer solution our country so very badly needs.
Even if this were the best of bills, and I don't think any sane person on any side of the issue would claim it as such, without the underlying support of the constitution as a basis for legal action, any positive effects it might grant to those who aren't insurance companies can be revoked the next time the Democrats are out of power. The way things are going now, that could be as soon as 2012!
Perhaps as a first tentative step, statutory legislation is the best we can do. I think the last great hope here is that people will love the outcome so much that any future politician who tries to weaken HCR rams into a proverbial third rail. However, the "citizens united" decision has put all the cards in the hands of people who benefit directly from screwing us over, by allowing corporations unfettered propaganda throughout any political campaign of any kind. I don't think that third rail is going to help us out much -- especially in the near term, as the full benefits (such as they are) don't kick in for 3 years!
I'm concerned that a well-meaning president has been squarely out-maneuvered by a unified congressional minority and what just might be the vilest SCOTUS bench lineup I've seen in my lifetime. By putting the cart before the horse, we have legislation that barely helps the patient while endangering the political career of every politician who votes for it. We may be in a double-bind on this one, since there's no way to solidify popular support for the amendment we need while insurance corporations can buy all the media outlets and ad time they like with money they get from taxpayer bailouts. And how much harder will it be to pass the equally necessary amendment to dismantle corporate personhood, while the fat cats have us by the short hairs?
We might still be able to score a win out of this mess, but it will require unprecedented unity and resolve on the part of hundreds of millions in the face of propaganda unlike anything we've ever seen. I wish us all the best of luck, and of course, astoundingly good health.
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