Make no mistake about it, the recent favorable Supreme Court decisions on the Affordable Care Act are important because they allow what is just a baby step on the way to real health care reform to proceed.  Given the short attention span of the average voter, if the ACA was snuffed out by unfavorable Supreme Court decisions, health care would literally be a dead issue, as would the health of many uninsured Americans.  Our electeds would move on to other things and it would be business as usual for America's insurance corps.  Translation, we would return to the bad old days of people being turned down for policies due to preexisting conditions and to upwardly spiraling premium prices!

All of that being said, the ACA is far from a panacea.  The law does not guarantee health care for all and will still leave a number of people without coverage.  The individual mandate that has many conservatives and some of us on the left upset was originally a conservative idea suggested in 1989 by someone from the Heritage Foundation, a bastion of conservatism.  Most importantly, the law doesn't address what I feel is the main reason for constantly escalating health care costs, the corporate middlemen in the insurance and for profit hospital industries.  It also does nothing to stop pharmaceutical corporations who, in my opinion,  feel that the bill for their research and development for medicines that they market globally should be paid for by Americans in the form of the highest drug prices in the world.  

From my perspective, a nationalized health care system that replaces the entrenched combination of insurance and for profit hospital special interests with a system of health care for all that also, by regulation, brings prescription drug prices down to what the rest of the world is paying, will be the only one that is cost effective and sustainable.  We can accomplish that by voting the corporate owned Republicans out of office, giving the Democrats a clear majority.  That would take away any excuse that corporate leased Democrats would have not to back universal health care.

Remember, health care for all should not be sacrificed in the name of profits for some!

Due to the conservatives' pro business, anti middle class war on the health care bill and on working families, the final version is not the safety blanket American families need.   We must continue our fight for single payer health care.  To hear what I have to say about it, visit my Listen Here! page.