The United States Senate last night (2/2/10) voted on an amendment to the FAA Air Transportation Modernization and Safety Improvement Act for the stated purpose of: To repeal the job-killing health care law and health care-related provisions in the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010.
It failed completely along party lines (51-47) with our Senators Snowe and Collins joining the GOP minority to take away health care reforms for Maine people. We continue to be ill represented by both of our Senators. First each of them played drawn out games to weaken the original legislation substantively and now they continue to attack health care for all us by engaging in this showboat, kneel-to-the-tea-party vote to completely reverse and trash the entire effort.
You'll hear from them that their goal is to replace it with a better plan. The better plan time has past, they know it, and this is just one more attempt to reverse health care progress and set our gains back to zero. And despite constitutional bluster about mandates by Republicans, absolutely many essential reforms like covering pre-existing conditions will not work without a larger insurance pool and our Senators are ignoring such facts.
We must remember this in 2012 when Senator Snowe, endorsed by Governor LePage (who is himself moving us into an unwanted lawsuit to overturn health care reform) runs for re-election. Yes, this is the same Senator Snowe who voted in the Senate Finance Committee (her pre-existing position) to support a similar bill in 2009. Ever since then her commitment to reform has headed downhill to today voting to overturn the vital minimal reforms we desperately needed. We need to also remember Senator Collins continual gamesmanship on health care in 2014.
For more about the price Maine citizens will have to pay by any repeal of the Affordable Care Act for Maine citizens, follow this healthcare.gov link.
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1 comment:
Nice piece Bruce. You're absolutely right.
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