“This is what change looks like,” said US President Barack Obama following the approval by the US House of Representatives of major healthcare reform yesterday. When President Obama signs the bill into law, however, a new battle begins.
“Attorneys general in three states — Virginia, Florida and South Carolina — have indicated they will file legal challenges to the measure, on the grounds that it violates the Constitution by requiring individuals to purchase insurance,” according to the New York Times.
Non-partisan politics are finished in America. They were, of course, finished before President Obama ever took office, but his dream of change in Washington, and pursuing consensus leadership, has collapsed following the healthcare reform showdown.
This was perhaps inevitable, but the bitterness will spill over from yesterday’s vote to courtrooms all over the US, into television commercials, talk-show debate, etc. The reform will bring healthcare to 31 million Americans who otherwise could not afford it, and it will guarantee coverage for children with pre-existing conditions.
In his speech to the House on the eve of the vote, President Obama reminded people that liberty and individuality need not be sacrificed by neighborliness and a sense of community.
There are a lot of Americans who think differently, and a lot of them truly hate the fact that their hard-earned money is going toward an expansion of government (forget for a moment that George Bush led the largest expansion of government in US history) and coerces them to support the most vulnerable in society.
There are many good reasons to resist expansion of government, and a lot of bad ones. The healthcare debate revealed all that is delusional, greedy, irrational, selfish, and uninformed about the US Republican party.
About Greg Baxter
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