If healthcare reform failed to pass Congress, your costs would have become unaffordable and coverage unreliably spotty.
Failure to pass healthcare reform would validate the Republican assertion that it’s too hard to do and the American people prefer unbridled insurance companies designed and operated to make healthy profits off healthy policyholders. This assertion finds it acceptable for a large population of uninsured people who get inadequate healthcare, developing chronic diseases, catastrophic illness and bills that bankrupt them and the public health systems that keep them alive. In addition to escalating premiums and copays, the employed middle class pay the taxes that support those public healthcare systems while they pay premiums that profit private healthcare.
The Republicans and insurers fought reform tooth and nail. They have good, secure coverage and they want you to think you do too. All those stories about recision and dropped coverage are just other people’s bad luck. They want you to be afraid that healthcare reform is socialism and you’ll face oppression and long waits for the doctor. They want you to quake at the notion that someone will make economic decisions about your medical care besides profit-driven insurers.
Do not drop your guard. The Republicans will continue to excoriate this bill, they will rail against the horrors and contest the progress that will come from the bill. They will use this bill as a rallying cry for their attempt to take a majority in both houses. They are strongly motivated by stubborn conviction and unrestrained corporate contributions to block other necessary reforms – banking, environmental regulation, consumer protection and economic justice.
Sadly, they cannot seem to argue these issues on their merits. They tell big lies, ask ridiculous questions as if they were based on fact (the “birthers” are an example). They need to make the middle class wonder, and worry, and quake. It is a campaign of terror. We cannot abide the fear-mongering. We must stand together, find solutions that bring together a Democratic majority, and use majority rule to enact the change that is so badly needed to restore our democracy.
We have to stand tall against the ridicule, we have to shout back when the fear-mongers distort, lie and threaten. If we are to have peace and clean air to breathe, we must stand together. If we are to preserve our democracy, establish truth and justice and live in a land of liberty, we must unite and demand change.
We have to be home of the brave to save the land of the free.