Actually, we should have said it two years ago, when the bill was passed.
It's the law: DEAL WITH IT.
Then start working to improve it. It's a great place to hang our hat on and get to work, and about 1000% better than what we've had before: which was NOTHING. Remember Social Security was pretty pitiful when it was passed; in fact, it might make ACA look downright amazing:
Our history teaches us otherwise. No self-respecting liberal today would support Franklin Roosevelt's original Social Security Act. It excluded agricultural workers -- a huge part of the economy in 1935, and one in which Latinos have traditionally worked. It excluded domestic workers, which included countless African Americans and immigrants. It did not cover the self-employed, or state and local government employees, or railroad employees, or federal employees or employees of nonprofits. It didn't even cover the clergy. FDR's Social Security Act did not have benefits for dependents or survivors. It did not have a cost-of-living increase. If you became disabled and couldn't work, you got nothing from Social Security.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/12/AR2009081202575_pf.htmlAnd another thing: it's just freaking INSURANCE. I've seen too many people here these past few days who honestly seem to think that what we lost with the public option (or what we would get with a single-payer system) is some kind of government health CARE. No, it was never going to be that. Medicare is not like that: it's just insurance obtained through the government, which is a great thing and our ultimate goal, because it pushes the cost of health care down further. But it goes to pay private doctors and private hospitals. Only Britain has a system of government-paid health workers and hospitals. In Canada it's public funds paying for private doctors. But the ACA, for the first time, will help bring costs down by regulating how much profit insurance companies can make. Previously, they've been taking 20-30% in administrative costs. Because of the ACA that has been reduced to 15%. And checks will be going out in the next weeks, totaling more than $1 billion, to reimburse employer plans and individuals whose companies spent more than that on non-health related costs.
I've seen too many bungled ideas about what health insurance and health care is; about what the law does; about what political realities are (and political history: please read "How Liberals Win" in today's NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/opinion/sunday/how-liberals-win.html?_r=1&ref=opinion ).
We should all be excited that this law, passed two years ago, will continue its implementation. And in 2014 we'll see how it works. People like it in Massachusetts; the world didn't end there. And the ACA is better, because it actually reduces costs and regulates insurers, which the MA plan didn't do.
This was a remarkable achievement, which presidents and others have been trying to do for sixty years. It was a huge political risk for this president and for those in Congress who helped to pass it, compromised as it became in the political fray, and tenuous as the passage was. We'll look back at this in 40 years and say, wow.
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