Public Employee Press

2012 Election
Republican plan: throw mama from the train

By JANE LaTOUR

Fortunately for the American people, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the constitutionality of President Barack Obama's Affordable Healthcare Act and upheld the legislation June 28 by a 5-4 vote, with even conservative Chief Justice John Roberts favoring the basic principle of the legislation.

One of America's deepest divides has been between those who have health care and those who don't. Some have "Cadillac" plans, with access to the latest technology and the best doctors; others have none. Economic class literally determines who lives and who dies.

Now, thanks to the "Obamacare" legislation, passed in 2010 with a huge boost from DC 37 activists and the whole American labor movement, more than 30 million of the 50 million previously uninsured Americans will have comprehensive coverage.

Lee Saunders, president of DC 37's national union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said the Supreme Court's decision means "millions of Americans will continue to benefit from this historic achievement. Children with pre-existing conditions will not be denied coverage. Children up to 26 can remain on their parents' health care policies. Millions of seniors can continue to depend on free cancer screenings and help with their prescription costs."

And when the law is fully implemented, insurance companies will no longer be able to deny anyone coverage because of pre-existing conditions or cut off coverage because of an expensive illness.

Despite the important benefits of this landmark legislation, the Republicans have been trying to overturn it since the bill became law. Although the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the law, this greatest improvement in American social legislation in decades faces deep danger in the November presidential election.

Romney aims to kill Obamacare

Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney has promised to overturn the law on his first day as president, if he is elected, a much harder task since the U.S. Supreme Court decision.

As Massachusetts governor, Romney enacted a universal health-care law that is often cited as a forerunner of the Obama plan, but his choice of Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan as his running mate shows that Romney has moved far to the right and far from his Massachusetts plan, which has cut that state's number of uninsured people to below 5 percent.

Romney himself has been vague about his vision for health care, speaking in glib generalities and doubletalk like, "We have to do our very best to help each state in their efforts to assure that every American has access to affordable health care."

Romney now backs Ryan's budget plan, which would "destroy Medicare as we know it," and replace its payments with totally inadequate vouchers to fund private insurance policies. Ryan aims to cut the Medicaid program by giving states block grants that would not rise no matter how medical costs go up.

While a new study by researchers at Harvard University found that when states expanded their Medicaid programs and gave more poor people health insurance, fewer people died, the Romney-Ryan budget would make it harder for states to provide health care or offer insurance to the poor and unemployed.

Newly required coverage for women, part of President Obama's health-care overhaul, mandates that insurers cover women's birth control, free screenings for gestational diabetes, testing for human papillomavirus in women over 30, counseling for HIV and sexually transmitted infections and screening for domestic violence, but the Republicans have been mounting attacks on women's health and reproductive choices. This could all be wiped out if Romney and Ryan win.

"For all the political and economic uncertainties about health reform, at least one thing seems clear," wrote New York Times reporter David Leonhardt. "President Obama's bill is the federal government's biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago."

The question before the voters in November is which America do we want to live in? The one where the inability to pay for health care dooms you to live - or die - without it? Or the one where, as President Obama says, "Americans are ensured some basic security when it comes to their health care."

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