America, land of social justice - the remix

Sometimes the remix is good, sometimes not so much. Today's remix is great. Yesterday, America's brave lawmakers passed a health care bill that will extend health care coverage to nearly 31 million Americans. While they were doing it, America's timid lawmakers sat on the sidelines in protest and howled about the injustice of it all. Those same lawmakers are already talking about a potential repeal even though President Obama won't sign the bill into law until tomorrow! Bad morals and after the effects of the new law are felt, bad politics too.

Let's examine what this bill does and how it makes America better.

1. It extends health care coverage to 31 million Americans who are currently without it. Somehow America is still the last industrialized country that doesn't provide all citizens with health insurance but this goes a long way towards fixing that.

2. It limits the ability of insurance companies to take your money while your healthy and bail on you when you're sick. There exists this idea that the market can and will do things better than the government and this may often be true, but when it comes to my health and well-being, the last thing I want is for a greedy corporation to have control of my livelihood. You don't trust an elected government to look out for you but you trust a company whose sole aim is to make a profit? Insurance companies are currently allowed to drop sick people when their conditions worsen and deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. That bothers me, and it bothers me that some people trust insurance companies that would do that rather than the government that just made it illegal. Tomorrow, insurance companies, much to their chagrin, will have to start giving people a fair deal.

3. It will REDUCE the federal budget deficit over the next 20 years. How about that? Despite costing nearly 940 billion dollars over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the bill saves about 100 billion dollars in the next 10 years and well over 1 trillion dollars in the decade after that. That's far from chump change.

It's hard to find a reason not to like this bill except for the fact that will ultimately be the political downfall of all those who have worked so long and so hard to derail it. This bill will benefit all Americans and those who stood in the way of progress will ultimately pay the price. Since those people are, for the most part, elderly white men, it is possible that we will be seeing them standing in front of the new death panels in the near future...just kidding guys, no one ever really believed your stupid lies and fear-mongering.

Health care is a social justice issue and I'm proud of America for doing the right thing. Despite having racial slurs thrown at them by, who else, the TEA Partiers, the brave men and women we have elected buckled down and did their jobs. Kudos Congress and kudos America. This should be a proud day for us all because today America became a little bit better.