One Year Later: Affordable Care Act

March 23rd, 2010, the day that President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act. Despite the fact the bill has a name, Republicans insist on calling it ObamaCare (I wonder how they'll feel about that name when he's a 2nd term President?). While Republicans point at the act and say the public hates it, the simple fact is that the majority either like it, or think it didn't go far enough, to which I agree. A year later, the public doesn't like the bill, but they don't like repeal either. Mixed signals to Washington.

I think the process really sucked. The President made the amazing mistake of allowing Max Baucus to drag the process out, then it only got worse. They let Joe Lieberman and his buddies get rid of the Public Option, a very popular component. They took out the employer mandate in favor of the individual mandate. I could go on, but won't. The bill wasn't great. It was "good enough" though. Repealing the bill would simply return us to a system driven entirely by corporate profit, run by men who are borderline criminals for their treatment of the common man. While the GOP says the bill is "job killing" and "budget busting," the CBO said neither of which, and that's really the best judgment we have to go on right now, at least for the next few years.

It's my best hope that the bill will be expanded on and improved in the next few years. I'd like to see a Public Option passed, I'd like to see changes to the mandate system, I'd like to see low premium, catastrophic packages made available, and I'd like to see more in the area of cost control. For now though, I'm just happy that something came of this, finally, and that the industry didn't kill reform efforts, again.