Tepid Reforms Mean Progressives Must Mobilize
April 1st, 2010
Health-care reform is historic, surely the most significant social legislation passed since Medicare. But it is a flawed and conservative bill, akin to the reforms Mitt Romney championed as the Republican governor of Massachusetts. It gives the insurance companies millions of new customers with no public option or Medicare buy-in to help put a lid on costs. It sustains the outrageous law that prohibits Medicare from negotiating bulk discounts for prescription drugs. It sustains the exemption of insurance companies from antitrust laws. This reality — a historic reform that isn't strong enough to get the job done — is characteristic of the Obama administration, a progressive-centrist government in a moment that demands fundamental reform.
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Taking the Long View on Health Care Reform
March 24th, 2010
How historic is the health-care reform bill that President Obama signed into law? The bill only begins the long task of taking back control of the health-care system from rapacious insurance and drug companies. We must work to include a real public option and to eliminate the insurance industry's antitrust exemption. Leaders, activist groups and citizens must continue the fight to improve the health-care legislation's protections and fix its flaws.
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Yes, They Made History
March 22nd, 2010
Yes, we did. Finally, President Obama can use those words. The passage of health care reform provided the first piece of incontestable evidence that Washington has changed. Congress is, indeed, capable of carrying through fundamental social reform. No longer will the United States be the outlier among wealthy nations in leaving so many of its citizens without basic health coverage. In approving the most sweeping piece of social legislation since the mid-1960s, Democrats proved that they can govern, even under challenging circumstances and in the face of significant internal divisions.
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Defining Moment
March 22nd, 2010
At long last, we saw this president leading, as only a president can. And we saw him leading as a progressive Democrat, finally admitting that no common ground with today's Republicans is possible, narrating stories we all can recognize about the human tragedy that is our current health care system. We watched Obama master the mechanics of legislative politics, cobbling together a majority one vote at a time. And we observed the Republican right reduced to sputtering frustration. What a splendid shift from the Obama who less than a month ago went imploringly to reason with the House Republican Caucus.
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