...this HISTORIC VICTORY on health care!

(This post by Laura was originally published on 2.9.2012.  In light of the recent Supreme Court ruling, we are reposting it today.)

I was at the National Hispanic Medical Society conference in Washington DC when the House agreed to the Senate's amendment of the Affordable Care Act, on March 23, 2010.  The energy and excitement was electrifying!  My feelings that day are the same today--the Affordable Care Act is monumental and critical for our country.  Indeed, it is one of the primary reasons why I support Obama wholeheartedly.

My favorite facts about the Affordable Care Act:

• Expands health care to 32 MILLION Americans


• Insurance companies are prevented from dropping sick people


• Insurance companies cannot deny children coverage if they have a pre-existing condition


• No lifetime caps on coverage


• Cost: $940bn over 10 years; but it would reduce deficit by $143bn by tackling fraud, abuse, and waste


• Expands women's health preventative coverage, including services such as well-woman visits, mammograms, domestic violence screening, screening for STIs, and access to birth control without charge

Of the Affordable Care Act, Barack Obama said "A good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence; or a good piece of music. Everybody can recognize it. They say, 'Huh. It works. It makes sense.'"

One of the most controversial aspects of the Affordable Care Act is this concept of the "individual mandate" or requiring people to have insurance.  The individual mandate is really important because it reduces the overall costs of health care for everyone.  But don't take my word for it.  Heck, (not h-e-ll, we are mormons after all) don't take Barack Obama's word for it!

"If you don't want to buy insurance, then you have to help pay for the cost of the state picking up your bill, because under federal law if someone doesn't have insurance, then we have to care for them in the hospitals, give them free care. So we said, no more, no more free riders. We are insisting on personal responsibility. Either get the insurance or help pay for your care."
Mitt Romney, defending the 2006 Massachusetts Health Reform in a debate with Rick Santorum, Jacksonville, Florida, 1/26/12

YES!  More cowbell.  At a time when partisan politics have harshly criticized the 2010 US health care reform, I long to hear Mitt Romney defend the Massachusetts Health Reform!  I believe there are far more important reasons for health reform (like, uhh, helping people), but it is soooo refreshing to hear it defended in 'Republican speak'.

I'm not the only one who feels good about this. Of Romney's words, Prof. John McDonough from Harvard School of Public Health said, "Romney has given in this entire presidential campaign last evening what I believe is the most effective and persuasive rationale and defense of the individual mandate."

A recent study reports that Taxachusetts (as my in-laws so lovingly call it) is doing very well after the 2006 health initiative.  Access to health care remains high, emergency room visits are down, and there has been some improvements in health outcomes.

"I gotta fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell!"

President Barack Obama, you gained my (second) vote on March 23, 2010.  And I personally thank you for on behalf of all 32 million Americans who will now have access to health care!

Post by Doctor LauraClubFancy, your health care correspondent-

Read more here:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/01/27/145993578/romneys-unlikely-and-persuasive-defense-of-the-individual-mandate

1. He frequently gets mistaken for Elder Bednar.

2. Unlike Elder Bednar, Roberts knows how to smile with his eyes.

3. In 1998, he petitioned the Supreme Court in behalf of several rerun television series -  and these were amazing T.V. shows such as Hart to Hart, T.J. Hooker, and Who's the Boss?

4. Roberts has been the focus of a lot of crazy conservative criticism: he was called "the worst part of the Bush legacy," and someone hacked his Wikipedia page to declare him "the 17th Chief Traitor." Additionally, Glenn (nobody misses you) Beck is selling T-shirts calling him a coward.  But despite all this, Roberts has kept good humor about him.  In explaining that he would be out of the country in Malta for two weeks teaching a class, he said, "Malta, as you know, is an impregnable island fortress. It seemed like a good idea."

5. He is way more attractive than Ginsberg... and... well, Ginsberg.

6. His ruling proved a little too confusing for those at FOX News and CNN - (he didn't accept the individual mandate based on the commerce argument, but accepted it as a tax) - and these esteemed news organizations reported that the individual mandate was ruled unconstitutional before realizing they'd got it wrong.  FOX (see below) condescended to look to SCOTUSblog.com to get their information, since their own correspondents couldn't process what they were reading.  I love it.

7. Now that Healthcare Reform is a reality, Rush Limbaugh will leave the country!  (He said he'd go to Costa Rica... which, uh... has socialized medicine.)

8. Justice Roberts has given Romney the phrase that pays: the healthcare law is a tax! Except this maybe a hard argument for Romney - because if Obama is raising taxes on Americans by enacting healthcare reform, then what did Romney do back in Massachusetts with virtually the same plan?

9. Roberts' swing vote decision restores some faith in the Supreme Court; maybe every decision isn't decided by political affiliation or expedience?

10. His decision validated President Obama's first term in office and cleared the way for the expansion of healthcare - a hope and dream of mine for a long time now.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiujbRm9WhI&w=640&h=360]

Post by Joseph M-

Post by Joseph -

Did I even spell that right?  The Supreme Court of the United States of America heard oral arguments about the Affordable Care Act today - specifically the individual insurance mandate.  And the questions came hard and fast from the conservative justices on the Court.  In fact, somebody even posed the age-old question: if we allow the federal government to require individuals to require people to purchase health insurance, "what else can it not do?"  Can it not then require people to buy broccoli?  (And of course this was Scalia with this inquiry - although some people might have guessed Clarence Thomas; but alas, he has a policy not to ask any questions during oral arguments.  And I can sympathize.  When I am around people talking and sounding real smart, sometimes I don't like to say anything either.)  But Scalia's broccoli question puzzles me somewhat, considering that the same question has been asked for the past two years and was even posed on Fox News a few days back.  What I mean is this: at the very least, couldn't Scalia have been original and used a different example, like carrots?  Seriously, is broccoli the only healthy vegetable out there? Or does Scalia have stock in Green Giant?  Maybe he was hoping for an Etch-a-Sketch-style surge on Wall Street.

What is also interesting is that the Obama administration's lawyer had to answer the question straightforwardly: "No, that's quite different. That's quite different," Donald Verrilli said.  "The food market, while it shares that trait that everybody's in it, it is not a market in which your participation is often unpredictable and often involuntary. It is not a market in which you often don't know before you go in what you need, and it is not a market in which, if you go in and -- and seek to obtain a product or service, you will get it even if you can't pay for it."

But all joking aside, I am following this story more than what my health insurance plan allows.  We have come too far and fought too hard for this victory to have it taken away by some conservative judges.  Checks and balances haven't seemed this fair since the Supreme Court voted Bush into the oval office in 2000.

Here are two links about today's proceedings:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2017846888_apussupremecourthealthcare.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/supreme-court-considers-main-constitutional-question-in-health-care-law/2012/03/26/gIQAkyKWdS_story_1.html

this HISTORIC VICTORY on health care!

I was at the National Hispanic Medical Society conference in Washington DC when the House agreed to the Senate's amendment of the Affordable Care Act, on March 23, 2010.  The energy and excitement was electrifying!  My feelings that day are the same today--the Affordable Care Act is monumental and critical for our country.  Indeed, it is one of the primary reasons why I support Obama wholeheartedly.

My favorite facts about the Affordable Care Act:

• Expands health care to 32 MILLION Americans


• Insurance companies are prevented from dropping sick people


• Insurance companies cannot deny children coverage if they have a pre-existing condition


• No lifetime caps on coverage


• Cost: $940bn over 10 years; but it would reduce deficit by $143bn by tackling fraud, abuse, and waste


• Expands women's health preventative coverage, including services such as well-woman visits, mammograms, domestic violence screening, screening for STIs, and access to birth control without charge

Of the Affordable Care Act, Barack Obama said "A good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence; or a good piece of music. Everybody can recognize it. They say, 'Huh. It works. It makes sense.'"

One of the most controversial aspects of the Affordable Care Act is this concept of the "individual mandate" or requiring people to have insurance.  The individual mandate is really important because it reduces the overall costs of health care for everyone.  But don't take my word for it.  Heck, (not h-e-ll, we are mormons after all) don't take Barack Obama's word for it!

"If you don't want to buy insurance, then you have to help pay for the cost of the state picking up your bill, because under federal law if someone doesn't have insurance, then we have to care for them in the hospitals, give them free care. So we said, no more, no more free riders. We are insisting on personal responsibility. Either get the insurance or help pay for your care."
Mitt Romney, defending the 2006 Massachusetts Health Reform in a debate with Rick Santorum, Jacksonville, Florida, 1/26/12

YES!  More cowbell.  At a time when partisan politics have harshly criticized the 2010 US health care reform, I long to hear Mitt Romney defend the Massachusetts Health Reform!  I believe there are far more important reasons for health reform (like, uhh, helping people), but it is soooo refreshing to hear it defended in 'Republican speak'.

I'm not the only one who feels good about this. Of Romney's words, Prof. John McDonough from Harvard School of Public Health said, "Romney has given in this entire presidential campaign last evening what I believe is the most effective and persuasive rationale and defense of the individual mandate."

A recent study reports that Taxachusetts (as my in-laws so lovingly call it) is doing very well after the 2006 health initiative.  Access to health care remains high, emergency room visits are down, and there has been some improvements in health outcomes.

"I gotta fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell!"

President Barack Obama, you gained my (second) vote on March 23, 2010.  And I personally thank you for on behalf of all 32 million Americans who will now have access to health care!

Post by Doctor LauraClubFancy, your health care correspondent-

Read more here:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/01/27/145993578/romneys-unlikely-and-persuasive-defense-of-the-individual-mandate