March 23 marked the third anniversary of the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, colloquially known as Obamacare, and still its bitter and selfish enemies plot to repeal the law.
With eight months to go before Obamacare (what began as an epithet is now a title of pride) goes into full effect, a cabal of health insurers, retailers and restaurants are waging a coordinated effort to gain Senate Democratic support for overturning the taxes that will be used to fund the new law, and repealing a mandate requiring employers to provide insurance coverage for full-time workers or pay a fine. Republican support is a given.
The campaign is backed by two of the business world's lobbying powerhouses: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business. The latter had a leading role in 2012's failed attempt to overturn Obamacare in the Supreme Court.
With Congress mired in partisan gridlock, lobbyists are seizing the opportunity to renew attacks on the law's projected costs that they hope will strike a chord with lawmakers whose attention is shifting to the 2014 congressional elections and the campaign donations they feed on.
To those politicians of weak will and compromised integrity I warn: Keep your hands off Obamacare.
I know firsthand the devastation the present health care system can wreak on honest, hardworking Americans. After twenty years, summers included, of teaching in the blackboard jungle of a Brooklyn high school my father retired and moved with my mother to Florida to pursue their American Dream of owning their own business.
Together they opened a franchised printing business. With Dad working hard at the helm and Mom working equally hard at the ledgers, the business prospered. Within a few years the business had attracted several large accounts, graduated from a modest storefront to a larger suite, added more employees, and outgrown the restrictive grip of the franchise. Dad chafed at having to buy all his supplies from the franchise’s own pricey vendors and at being billed for compulsory television commercials he neither wanted nor needed. And so my father made a fateful decision, cashing out his teacher’s pension to buy his business from the franchise. With his pension went his health insurance. But Dad was in his early 60s, healthy, active, and optimistic about the future, and there was always time to shop around for a new health insurance policy.
My father was normally a man of sound judgment and common sense, but that day he was foolish. Then again, how could he have known that he would soon be diagnosed with a virulent form of skin cancer that would take his life a matter of months?
The business was sold. Dad underwent agonizing chemotherapy treatments. Mom returned to selling shoes in a department store, as she had done years before. Dad suffered a medical emergency and was hospitalized. Mom did her best to keep up with the bills but they quickly piled up. Their life savings dried up. When a loved one is critically ill, you don’t pinch pennies.
When my father died after two months of hospital care, he left behind a heartbroken family and medical bills in excess of six figures. To pay the bills, Mom was compelled to sell the modest suburban home in which she and my father had planned to spend their retirement years and moved into a tiny apartment on the outskirts of the city. Frugal living allowed her eventually to move to a more comfortable condo but she never did get to enjoy any sort of retirement, ironically being fatally stricken upon returning home from working her shift in the billing department of a hospital.
Now, after years of tireless struggle and frequently dashed hopes, we are within sight of that day we have waited so long to see. The Affordable Care Act, for all its compromises and flaws, has been passed. The constitutionality of the law has been upheld by the Supreme Court. The semantics of "Is it a tax or not a tax?" are moot. Soon we will be living in a nation whose citizens need no longer fear losing their home when they or a family member have the misfortune to become ill. But the bitter opponents of Obamacare and the decency and dignity it represents refuse to accept defeat, just as we must never accept a return to the past.
So bring it on, lobbyists, feckless politicians, corporate shills and well-oiled propagandists. For me, this challenge is personal. Mom and Dad, and everyone else who’s lived their story or loved someone with a story like it: this fight’s for you.