Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Health care reform...

...was signed into law a year ago today.

Jonathan Cohn, of the New Republic, is one of the best reporters I've found on the subject. Today he writes, "The Affordable Care Act, One Year Later" (my emphasis):

Are there better alternatives? Of course. But the loudest critics of the law, from the right, don’t have them. For all of their screaming, they have yet to put forward a credible plan that can do as much, let alone more, for less money. Their plans, stripped of misleading rhetoric, generally involve covering far fewer people, dramatically reducing the coverage that people have, or some combination of the two. Their dispute is not with the means Democrats have used to make health care affordable to all. It’s with the goal itself.

No, the way to improve the law is to build upon it--to bolster the insurance coverage, reach those Americans the law as written will not reach, and to strengthen the experiments in cost control that work. The best analysis of the law remains the one Senator Tom Harkin gave: The Affordable Care Act is not a mansion. It’s a starter home. But it’s got a solid foundation, a sturdy roof, and room for expansion.

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