Day: June 28, 2012

We got very good news from the Supreme Court today. There are no constitutional barriers to the ACA going fully into effect. The exchanges, subsidies for insurance and the expansion of Medicaid will provide affordable insurance for over thirty million people who don’t have it now. Over a hundred million people will be protected from losing their insurance or paying more if they have pre-existing conditions or are older or women. And the provisions already in place—that make preventive care free, that reduce pharmaceutical costs for seniors, that enable people 26 and younger to stay on the insurance of the parents—will remain in place. This is all great news. And it would not have happened without all the hard work you did in support of what became the ACA. That work didn’t stop after the legislation was passed. As I explain more below, the decision today was in no small… Continue reading

Can we progressives not attack each other after the decision? I’m going to be writing more about the ACA and the Court after we hear the decision. But here is one plea in advance of the decision: can we progressives not get in a circle and start shooting at one another? That means, can the single payer folks not lead off with “if Obama only had pushed single payer through Congress we wouldn’t have to worry about the Court today?” Everyone who pays any attention to Congress knows that single payer had no chance in 2009-2010 and it does the progressive cause no good to make up stories about what is politically possible and what is not. More importantly we need to unite against the enemy, which is not the supporters of Obamacare but the corporate conservatives who, if they get their way today, are going to go after Medicare… Continue reading