About 100 years after Teddy Roosevelt first talked about making health care available to all, and more than 50 years after Harry Truman first tried to actually accomplish it, and even Richard Nixon got into the act --
We finally have, not a perfect plan, but a major step toward universal health care.Once the House managed to pass the Senate bill, things went into high gear. This afternoon, the Senate finished voting down all the Republican attempts to derail it, and passed the reconciliation bill by 56-43.
Then, with uncharacteristic speed, the House voted this evening to approve the minor changes that were needed to fix flaws in the bill by a vote of 220-207.
So now the legislation is signed, sealed, and delivered. But it's only a beginning.
Ryan Grim wrote on Huffington Post:
Progressive Democrats will continue to push, meanwhile, for substantial advances. "It is a beginning," Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) told HuffPost. "Remember, there was a 1957 Civil Rights Act; then there was a 1960 Civil Rights Act; then a 1964 Civil Rights Act' then a 1965 Voting Rights Act; and there have been subsequent voting and civil rights bills."RalphThursday's victory was a step forward in the health care fight, he said, but far from the last step. "I'm solidly in favor of the public option. I'm a single-payer backer and I think that's what we're ultimately going to end up with. I hope it doesn't take too long," he said. "You know, if there was no '57 act, maybe there would never have been a '64 act. So this is an important prelude. It's a good day."
THIS MOMENTOUS DAY!
ReplyDeleteNot one day in anyone’s life is an uneventful day, no day without profound meaning, no matter how dull and boring it might seem, no matter whether you are a seamstress or a queen, a shoeshine boy or a movie star, a renowned philosopher or a Down’s syndrome child.
Because in every day of your life, there are opportunities to perform little kindnesses for others, both by conscious acts of will and unconscious example.
Each smallest act of kindness – even just words of hope when they are needed, the remembrance of a birthday, a compliment that engenders a smile – reverberates across great distances and spans of time, affecting lives unknown to the one whose generous spirit was the source of this good echo, because kindness is passed on and grows each time it’s passed, until a simple courtesy becomes an act of selfless courage years later and far away.
Likewise, each small meanness, each thoughtless expression of hatred, each envious and bitter act, regardless of how petty, can inspire others, and is therefore the seed that ultimately produces evil fruit, poisoning people whom you have never met and never will.
All human lives are so profoundly and intricately entwined – those dead, those living, those generations yet to come – that the fate of all is the fate of each, and the hope of humanity rests in every heart and in every pair of hands.
Therefore, after every failure, we are obliged to strive again for success, and when faced with the end of one thing, we must build something new and better in the ashes, just as from pain and grief, we must weave hope, for each of us is a thread critical to the strength – the very survival – of the human tapestry.
Every hour in every life contains such often-unrecognized potential to affect the world that the great days for which we, in our dissatisfaction, so often yearn are already with us; all great days and thrilling possibilities are combined always in THIS MOMENTOUS DAY!
Excerpt from Dean Koontz’s book, “From the Corner of His Eye”.
It embodies the idea of how the smallest of acts can have such a profound effect on each of our lives.
The last eighteen months has been the stuff of history books, and this Healthcare Bill is, indeed, one of the big chapters. The one that's coming, Financial Reform, may be even bigger. The Bill headed for the floor is ~1300 pages. And there are some expensive wars to terminate post-haste.
ReplyDeleteThere are 'miles to go before we sleep.'