Harold Pollack and Greg Anrig at the Washington Monthly on the president's healthcare reform success:
[S]urprising even to many advocates of health care reform, evidence is emerging that the ACA is already improving life for millions of average Americans. It is promoting long-overdue fundamental changes in our dysfunctional medical system. Moreover, because those reforms are starting to directly address heightened economic insecurities of average families -- the personal financial conditions that will largely determine this year's election outcomes -- President Obama would be wise to more forcefully and more specifically explain how his health care bill is already helping millions of vulnerable families and the country as a whole.
Sure, financially-pressured families will celebrate the derring-do of Seal Team Six. They should directly appreciate the immediate impact of improved insurance coverage and reduced medical costs.
Steve Benen, now writing for Maddowblog, adds:
The health care law (1) is combating fraud and abuse, which in turns saves Americans quite a bit of money; (2) has brought coverage to 2.5 million young adults; (3) is delivering major savings to seniors on prescription drugs; (4) is giving a boost to small businesses through ACA tax credits; (5) has slowed the growth of Medicare spending; (6) has provided new treatment options for cancer patients; and (7) has offered new coverage protections for those with pre-existing conditions.
Also, the Obama administration's mandated that all contraception be covered without deductibles or copays.
Meanwhile, did you know the California Senate voted on a single-payer, "Medicare for All" plan on Monday? It happened. And I didn't hear a word from the usual single-payer-or-kill-the-bill people because they probably didn't even know about it, much less rally in support of it.
The bill failed. By two goddamn votes. Two votes.
This is why we lose. Too many of us are almost exclusively concerned with parroting the agenda of certain activists and their collection of two or three pet issues, so we miss the big picture. California won't get a single-payer healthcare system built into the new structure of the president's healthcare reform act partly because progressives didn't even show up to fight. But we'll scramble over each other to bitch and screech about the "centrism" and "compromised" nature of above list of successes because they're not progressive enough.
It's infuriating.