My home state, along with a dozen others, is suing the U.S. government over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
Yes, I’m talking about Texas, Our Texas, the place where I was born and raised. A state where one in four people has no health insurance; a state that’s home to more uninsured people than any other.
I don’t mean to say I just found out about this. The suit was filed last March, the same day President Obama signed health care reform into law. But I just got around to reading the 23-page document last night. Clearly, the chief attorneys for all these states are hoping to get the act thrown out before it fully takes effect.
Come on, people. The system we have isn’t working. Why not give this new law a try?
As I see it, the current state of health care in this country is a slow-motion train wreck. I’ve watched for twenty years at fairly close range: as a consumer of health services…a breadwinner with responsibility for other household members…a friend of working musicians who have played countless benefit concerts for sick and injured colleagues who can’t pay their doctor bills. It’s a tangled mess that ruins lives and warps our whole economy. And it’s steadily getting worse.
I have a lot to say about various aspects of this imbroglio. I’ll share some in future posts, and hope to get some additional comments from readers. For now, I’ll just say this:
If I knew how to fix health care, I’d have typed up my plan and sent it to our last four presidents. So I’m not going to point fingers at the members of Congress who spent a year debating this legislation, tweaking its provisions, making deals, and finally getting it passed.
I don’t agree with every single provision in the act, but I think there’s enough good stuff there to make a start on fixing some very thorny problems. I’m more than willing to give it a chance.
It's hard to imagine what middle and lower middle class Americans have against health care reform. It is NOT hard to imagine what the insurance companies have against it.
ReplyDeleteSo, it seems to me it gets down to election finance reform. Common Cause was right.
Obamacare is a camel: a horse designed by committee. But a camel beats a train wreck anyday. I'm hoping this one will get us close to universal health care, though the ride will undoubtedly be a bumpy one.
ReplyDeleteWhen stevebrooksaustin said a camel beats a train wreck, I kept imagining what would happen on the railroad track if the two should both end up there at the same time. That said, it is probable that anything designed by committee will have a lot of shortcomings. We will have to see what happens here and I guess the bumpy ride will resemble 6 flags over Texas.
ReplyDelete