Right here you'll find an excellent article* that reminds all of us progressives who were bitterly disappointed at what the health care bill lacked, as well as the advantages to Big Pharma and the health insurance colossus that were built into it, why the law is something we should be defending much more vigorously than a lot of us are. (I must plead guilty for being one of those progressives. You can read my most recent blast on the ACA here. It does an excellent job of pointing out all of the non-progressive aspects of the law.) Here, succinctly, are the major points we should remember about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA)--it's full and proper name. ("Obamacare" is a Republican slur that the party has succeeded in turning into a dismissive synonym for it.). The law, we're reminded:
- "expands access to medical care and health insurance to more than 30 million low- and middle-income Americans;
- imposes much of the cost on affluent individuals and businesses;
- terminates longstanding practices by parts of the private insurance industry that victimized millions of sick Americans even after they’d paid premiums for decades;
- elevates health and prevention as a priority;
- launches the most comprehensive set of initiatives and experiments to date to restrain both government and private-sector expenditures on medical care and claw back inefficient spending to help pay for widening access."
*The piece is in large part a discussion of a new book on the evolution of the ACA by Paul Starr, Remedy and Reaction.
