Reform Rx - Bye Bipartisan – Be Partisan

Health Care Reform Has Passed!

This final bill was not my health care reform preference. It is a result of good intentions being diluted by industry lobbying and money. It suffered a thousand little cuts by Republicans seeking to defeat it. A final effort to tear it completely down with teabagger threats and hate was undertaken.

But it has passed. It will be the law of the land. It will be a measure that we can alter, improve, correct, refine, expand, and build upon. In seven more years of an Obama Presidency we can surely accomplish much more reform of health care.

The process was endlessly dragged on through last summer’s futile search for bi-partisanship in which our own Maine Senators Snowe and Collins dumped their moderate posturing to aid right wing and corporate interests by creating more space for time killing delays.

The confrontation should have come last spring. The vote would have perhaps been exactly the same but it would have been on a far stronger and less diluted measure.

We must learn from this. We do not have a single honest bipartisan partner in the Republican Party. The leadership from President Obama to finalize passage of this measure indicates he understands this reality. The evidence now tells us that leading toward what is morally right henceforth requires us to unabashedly be partisan on the side of this county’s people.