The entire nation seems 'stuck on hold" while we await word from the Supreme Court.
Will they or won't they affirm the constitutionality of the "individual mandate" provision of the Affordable Health Care Act? Whether the justices deem that life-saving care is a constitutional guarantee, or not, it will always be the right thing to do.
In the fall of 1973 my father and mother experienced every parent's worst nightmare: their child was diagnosed with a lethal form of bone cancer. Amputating their 12-year-old son's leg was the surest way to save his life.
Among the chaos of pain, terror and anguish that flooded through their weary brains during my brother's diagnosis, surgery, treatment and physical therapy so that he could learn how to walk with a prosthetic limb, the one fear neither Mom nor Dad had to face was "How will we pay for this?"
Ted and Joan Kennedy, ironically, were the lucky ones. My brother, Teddy Jr., recovered fully and our father was able to witness the birth of his grandson and namesake, Edward M. Kennedy III.
But for millions of Americans, a diagnosis of cancer would have not only been emotionally and physically devastating, it could have meant bankruptcy and perhaps even losing their home, along with their child.
My father saw this health care crisis coming decades before it dominated headlines, talk shows, opinion pages and Facebook chat rooms. In fact, he dedicated his almost forty-seven years in public office to what he called "the unfinished business of our nation," that of assuring every American has the medical care he or she needs to survive.
And while Ted Kennedy did not live to see health care reform signed into law, he was instrumental in helping me co-sponsor the "Paul Wellstone Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act" of 2008, a bill that guarantees fair and equal coverage for those who struggle with maladies of the mind. Watching that bill pass with bipartisan support and signed into law by President George W. Bush was my proudest day in office.
Then two years later, I was honored to be at President Barack Obama's side as he put his signature to the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" in 2010, exactly forty years after my father first introduced a bill to provide national health insurance.
Sadly, that was not the end of the debate. After two more years of political and legal wrangling, we still are without health care protection. And so we wait some more before finally hearing (perhaps as early as this week) whether the Supreme Court agrees with my father when he said, health care was not "a question of policy, but one that goes to the heart of a just society."
Meanwhile, there is another health care law that awaits action. Our "Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act" has been on the books four years and has yet to be realized. But its delay is due not to constitutional challenges or political partisanship. Mental Health Parity languishes due to ignorance, bigotry and attitudinal barriers, which stigmatize mental challenges as somehow less urgent, or less tangible.
These delays must stop. This has become an issue that cannot wait for many Americans, most urgently, our servicemen and women. Just last week the Pentagon reported that suicide among active duty troops has become epidemic. Shockingly, more active duty troops are dying by their own hand than are killed in action. And the numbers only get worse once the soldier comes home: a veteran takes his or her own life every 80 minutes.
We cannot allow these heroes to become medical Prisoners of War due to their unseen wounds, including traumatic brain injuries, PTSD, depression and substance abuse. While we debate, they deteriorate.
They fought and suffered for us, but if we only treat their broken limbs, ignoring their often ravaged minds as carrying "invisible" and somehow "shameful" wounds, we dishonor ourselves.
We need to demand that our nation serve these patriots and not allow our party polemics and fiscal bickering to dishonor their service and their sacrifice.
Like thousands of veterans, my brother Teddy has a prosthetic limb. We need to make sure their hidden wounds of war are treated with same urgency as their lost arms and legs. We must all work to treat illnesses of the brain with the diligence with which my brother's cancer once was.
My father called universal health care the "cause of my life."
Regardless of how the Court votes, his fight, and all of our fight, will continue so that needed physical and mental care is actually received.
As we learned last week, every delay costs lives. Literally.
either way "the right thing to do" is an intellectually lazy argument. Both red and blue agree reforms are necessary. What type of reforms, and how to enact them are where the differences lay. Fact is this is a poorly written law that was not intended to be passed in its current form...the senate democrats were forced to vote for the house version even though they didn't like the content of the bill. Now all of a sudden it's a moral issue?
"The republican party and their followers are evil"......it is people like this who are dragging the country down, not a particular political party. How can you blame republicans for not working with the democrats, and at the same time dismiss the entire GOP as evil racists because they don't think like you?
I don't belong to a political party. from where I sit they both have some serious flaws.I just don't understand the lack of tolerance for opposing viewpoints. This self righteous poppycock makes me sick. do you really think one side is always objectively correct about everything, and the other is always objectively wrong (evil?)? you are just as partisan as those you scold, and from where I sit are just as big of a detriment to this country and its politics. Where are all the moderates? where did all the common sense go?!?
As a child in the fifties, I watched TV news programs showing films of men pointing water cannons at children peacefully picketing. Ditto Bull Connor and German Shepard dogs. Perhaps people were galvanized by what was reported and the nation thought "we need to do the right thing." And we did.
It is most definitely true that the ACA is far from perfect, but I summit that such legislation is the right thing to do. And, economically and medically we will end up paying less in the long run. All the Chicken Littles' out there need to give it a rest and clear thinking congressmen need to take up the challenge.
If you want to provide all Americans with affordable coverage with affordable coverage then allow each and every one of us to use individual health saving accounts. Numerous corporations, specifically Whole Foods, provide these to their employees, but the government only allows HSA's thorugh an employer. Provide them to everyone just like an IRA if you are truly interested in lowering health care costs. The affordable health care act specifically rules HSA's as an unacceptable plan because of accounting rules.
If you want to be honest with Americans then end the horrendous effects that HMO's, Medicare, and Medicaid have had on health care costs in this country. Obamacare does nothing to solve costs, and anyone who claims the ACA does is blatantly disingenuous and dishonest.
You persist in the misguided belief that if someone else pays for it, then it is free.
There is no free lunch. None of us can consume goods and services that we collectively are not earning the money to pay for. We cannot provide for "universal health insurance" if "universal" includes people who do not work for a living and do not contribute to their own cost of insurance for free.
The problem with "socialism" is that as Margaret Thatcher once said, "sooner or later you run out of other peoples money". Well guess what. We the taxpayers of America are those "other people". And we are not going to pay for you to give our money away to people in order for you to get re-elected any more.
So you liberals are screwed. We will not pay for your social experiments with our money any more. Period, end of story. If you want to advance the state of the social order, then do it with your own money and not ours. Otherwise go pound sand. Is the message clear?
Was 2010 clear enough for you? If not wait until this year. We are not Greece, Spain, or Italy and we have no desire to go down that road. Get the message. Wise up. Become part of the solution not part of the problem.
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We Americans and our President will show us what that means with strength and fortitude
in the same way he forced the dream act down the naysayers throats.
Being Americans means we take care of our people, it is part of our creed. And we will take your money to do it, too, and combine it with all the others.
Big deal.
We will take that money proportionately from you and your cohorts and guess what, we will create apprentice training programs for young black males who the unions refused to train.
Ha, I knew you would like that one. Further, we are going to have more community health centers and train nurse practitioners to act as doctors to MAN those centers.
Ha, and all the while we doing this, we will be tickling you until with your own advance stage of cancer you come to us. At which point we will close our mouths and do what must be done because we
Americas and have one proud country.
(THAT FAVORITE MARK WAS AN ERROR!!!)
it's so easy to be haughty when your prescription is to dig deeper into someone else's pocket....
"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State."
--Madison, Federalist 45
There are a very large number of vets getiing mental health treatment . The vets of WW I and II did not get treatment even though those wars were far more traumatic . Is all this treatment helping other than helping people to become homeless and suicidal ?
Healthcare costs are increasing for many reasons, blaming insurance and profit is incorrect and simplistic beyond measure.
Those that say race is not the issue,I am willing to bet $10(don't have $10,000 like Mitt) that if these reforms were signed into law by a white President like Bush or even Clinton it would not be before the supreme court now and that is an American tragedy and fact.These rats were all hibernating until election night 2008 and they have not returned to their filthy holes since.
They have refused to let this duly elected president govern...every single minute of every single day since November 6,2008...non stop obstruction and filibusters.And then they have the gall to blame him for them not doing their job like passing the Jobs Act.No you cannot have it both ways....you cannot block Obama's recovery efforts and blame him for the high jobless rate at the same time...NO YOU CAN'T.
While there may be legitimate conservative arguments, the "Christian" one is certainly not among them. The stories say Christ healed the sick that came to him in the street. Not only the wealthy sick who made a contribution to his coffers. Through that generosity he showed that he was an instrument of God.
I'm not suggesting that doctors should provide services for free, but that those who want to claim that they live in a Christian nation, should probably exhibit Christ-like sensibilitites collectively and care for the poor and the sick. If that's not on your agenda, that's your choice, but you should admit that you have little claim to the mantle of Christ.
This myth empowers the medical establishment itself to operate in their own interests and not in the patient's.
Those who go to doctors the most are the unhealthiest. One reason is that that is the hypochondriac's way. Another is that those who are actually unhealthy are looking for cures of course.
Often though the doctor can't do anything, doesn't understand the cause of the patient's complaints and prescribes whatever he requests, or does so according to an improper diagnosis, even if to the patient's own detriment.
Just trying to keep things in perspective.