USA Passes Health Care Reform

After decades of "business as usual," a mild form of health care reform was passed by Democrats, without a single vote of approval by Republicans - many saying that legislators needed to "start over" and "rethink" health care reform and come back with "something better." Amen.

What this means, immediately - When people become too sick to work, insurance companies can not terminate their health care that was tied to their work benefits.

Immediately - insurance companies must stop "excluding" pre-existing conditions from insurance policies.

"Corporate Greed" is the only way to explain how our great nation has been undermined in the last 30 years!

Many people have been forced to work two "part-time" 30-hour jobs with no benefits - or work as "outside contractors" with no company benefits. Because giant corporations are able to utilize cheap over-seas labor to manufacture products sold in the United States, the profit margins are very slim on goods manufactured here by self-employed people and small companies, contributing to another large group of uninsured workers.

Passage of this rather mild health care reform package signals "change" by the people, for the people in spite of overwhelming odds and tremendous pressure by multi-billion $$ corporations to stay the course on a path of greed and distruction of the American Dream.

You can judge a nation by the way it treats its most vulnerable citizens - Aristotle said.

When the United States Senate dedicated a building to former U.S. Senator Hubert Humphrey he put it this way "...the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life; the sick, the needy and the handicapped. " - Last Speech of Hubert H. Humphrey Nov. 1, 1977, Washington, D.C.

Here's a little slice of Democracy in April 2010 - The delivery of 1.5 million signatures from the estimated 3 million Americans who personally worked via Organize for America to pass health care reform legislation. As my family doctor said, "any reform" will be good. It will give us something to work on.

Together, along with President Obama, we beat the insurance companies! The legislation will bring affordable coverage to 32 million uninsured people in the United States, reduce the cost of insurance for families and small businesses, and create tougher patient protection in this country.