Approved.
Yes.
It happened, the beginning of a major overhaul of the American health care system. A year and two months into his presidency, Barack Obama made health care reform happen. Did you just hear that? Obama passed health care reform. For real.
He stuck to it, and for once the Democrats put all their shit aside and played to win - though it took until the last day for them to play ball. I mean, really? These are Democrats we're talking about, right? That loose affiliation of moderates, semi-conservatives, working-class liberals and snow-white, do-nothing liberals, each group with its own thoughts and agendas? When it came time to put up and shut up, they finally did.
Bart Stupak and your fearsome 12, I'm looking at you. I will not fault your opposition to abortion; believe it or not, most people don't like abortion, either. I won't even argue your wishes to see abortion made illegal, because that's just an unrealistic view to have. We don't live in a perfect world where "responsibility" alone prevents unwanted pregnancy; in fact, all this abstinence-only sex edjumakayshon has made people less responsible because they don't have all the knowledge available to them.
However, I will fault Stupak's misguided stand against this bill in seeking some kind of money-back guarantee that federal funds will not fund elective abortions when reality said over and over that the bill wouldn't. Now, let's bring this to where all serious discussions wind up: comic books. Ever hear of "New Gods"? OK, here's a primer: one planet split into two - heavenly New Genesis, led by the benevolent god Highfather, and hellish Apokolips, led by evil god Darkseid. As good and evil do, the planets were locked in bitter struggle for eons, until an uneasy truce was struck when Highfather and Darkseid exchanged their first-born sons. The abortion deal in American law is an uneasy truce, with incursions occasionally made on either side, but the truce is maintained for the sake of what would happen without it - mass bloodshed and suffering. Stupak, the health care bill never was going to violate the truce, especially when Obama and the Democrats' actual opposition did everything in their power to scorch the earth on this thing without the abortion point.
That opposition, led by Republican leadership and the Scared Racist Reactionaries so-called Tea Party and egged on by FOX News (who demanded their viewers attend rallies and relentlessly call congressmen in opposition), did what they could. And credit to them for playing on Americans' old-time bogeymen: socialism, federalism, debt, wealth-is-God's-reward and the-poor-deserve-to-be-poor, and race-baiting. Despite the fact that people overall wanted major changes to the health care system, the conversation always went to the people who clamored the loudest and had the right mouthpieces - FOX News, Sarah Palin! And I'm sure we'll see these terrors in the mid-term elections.
Some other thoughts:
1. The Republicans had no alternative. They said they did, but did we ever see it? Did John Boehner have some big news conference with a bullet-pointed full-scale plan? Shouting "kill the bill" and "tort reform will fix everything" is not a plan. Being the opposition means you have to bring something to the table as well as just oppose.
2. Opposing reforms of the health care system ends up being a defense of the status quo. This is different from the Bush era and terrorism, where arguments against the Patriot Act and waterboarding were cast as wanting the terrorists to win, because they were based on the fears of theoretical attack scenarios. With health care, the status quo was real. Children denied health care coverage because they have a disease is real and in your house. Increasing numbers of unemployed losing coverage is in your house. Rosemary being uninsured because they won't approve a healthy fat person is in my house. So, do you want to stand up for the health insurance industry? You say you don't want government determining whether we live or die (a lie), yet you're fine with private industry deciding it (the truth)?
3. I've never read any history showing that universal health care - whether state-run, like Canada, or government-insured, like ours will be - was the tipping point of tyranny. I don't remember Stalin saying, "Now we'll give them health care, and our plan will be complete!"
4. Jon Voight was against it. The Jon Voight Rule, simply, is this: Taking Voight out of the equation ensures success. Look at Angelina Jolie - she definitely did better not having daddy around.
5. It's harder to claim health care isn't a right in an age where people need it more and unemployment is 10 percent.
6. It's HEALTH CARE. You're telling me that helping people get better HEALTH CARE will be the downfall of our country? John Boehner thought he was standing in front of the Tiananmen Square tank, tearing down the Teapot Dome, telling Gorbachev to tear down that wall and paddling across the Delaware all at once. When really, all he was doing was what only Superman could do: turn the earth spinning backwards to turn back time. In the end, he'll be history's punching bag - an orange-faced punching bag - because he fought the future, and the future always wins.
7. You can't fight the future. And the future is what Obama has meant to me above all. The future is here, people, and Obama is helping to usher in a 21st-century America. Changes such as health care are just the beginning. Sunday night, Obama said, "This is what change looks like." Yes, this is what significant change looks like: bloody, nasty, woefully imperfect, a struggle to the last man, but the good will bear out.
What will the future be politically, culturally? I'm not sure. But when Rosemary gets to that insurance exchange, and my friends' babies won't be denied because of health conditions, I know we've done something fundamentally right today.