Amidst the howls of protest and anguish and anger from opponents to the Affordable Care Act following today's SCOTUS decision, there are many calls for fighting for freedom and liberty against Washingtonian tyranny. Calls that sound a lot like one George Wallace, a few generations back.
Racism and race prejudice are awful things, of course, and it's hard to conflate those awful things with folks who are "just" against health care coverage reform. But it's not so difficult to connect those dots. In both cases, people are declaring their personal freedom to do what they want (in particular, not be compelled to buy insurance coverage; once upon a time, not be compelled to empower and treat equaly people of color) is presented as trumping the compelling, fundamental needs of others (being able to receive medical care, preventing lives of misery or sickening unto death, or, in that earlier era, the need and right to be treated as an equal citizen and member of society). In both cases those without power are marginalized, treated as less important and less worthy than those who are doing more or less okay under the current system.
Which makes me wonder how folks 40-50 years from now will look upon our debate over whether we, as a society, should be doing all we can to make sure that people can get the fundamental medical care they need.
(h/t Stan)
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Wrong side of history, basically.
But if ACA survives past 2018, I don't think people will ever mention it again in a serious attempt to remove it. Corporate pressure isn't as high as people might believe, and thus once they incur the initial costs of reorganizing and then begin to reap the benefits of compulsory enrollment, they won't bother to fund anyone based on opposition to it.
The question is, of course, whether it will take us another 50 years to get a really good healthcare system.
Well, there is that. There will still be people uncovered under ACA (more, if the SCOTUS-permitted Medicaid loophole persists). But I agree that the question of "whether we should have at least this degree of societal involvement in medical coverage for the citizenry" will be largely settled by the end of the decade (and even likely by the next presidential campaign).
For that matter, even if Romney takes the White House (heaven forefend), the GOP is going to have difficulty dismantling much of what's already had a chance to come into place.
Bingo. It has too much inertia to be easily reversed. Even if Romney won and the entire thing was repealed the day of inauguration, I suspect that companies are already too invested in the structure to discard it. The cost of removal would, in fact, be too high.