Affordable Health Care

It is with some relief that I have read that the Supreme Court of the United States (aka "SCOTUS") today upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act ("ACA"), referred to sneeringly and nastily as "Obamacare" by too many in the US Republican Party whose parents apparently never taught them civilized manners.

Of course, partisan politics in the US, coupled with corporate media bias against anything that might actually make President Obama look good, and fact-checking all being what they are, several of the major news organizations immediately broadcast to the world that SCOTUS had declared the ACA "unconstitutional." Many of us are old enough to remember - if just barely - the last time that US media got the facts so wrong, when newspapers announced that "Dewey Beats Truman" in November 1948.  Of course, it was just the opposite.  Truman won that election.  In 1948, the news services had more of an excuse. It actually took a while to count the votes in those days. Because of the faux pas of today's contemporary media, late-night comedians will have fodder for their jokes stretching into weeks. Some are already referring to this media fiasco as President Obama's "Truman moment."

Much as I may be dissatisfied with the ACA's provisions for not being a national health service like the majority of effective health systems in the world - including the developing world - its provisions have enabled many of my fellow citizens to purchase health insurance coverage, some for the first time in their lives. Under the ACA, the insurance companies that make a business out of what should be a human right can no longer deny coverage to individuals who suffer from the often vague disqualifier known as a "pre-existing condition."   This so-called "pre-existing condition" was all too often a moving target in its identification, serving more the financial interests of the insurance companies than the legitimate health interests of us all.

Interestingly, here in Switzerland, the Swiss system is not national health care as it is in France. It is more like the US system in that we must all purchase private insurance. The difference here however is that the companies are regulated and controlled by the State. The costs are eminently reasonable. And even politicians of the right-wing here are absolutely scandalized at the thought that anyone should ever have to go bankrupt because of health care costs.

It's about time that something reasonable was decided by this SCOTUS. I am still rankling - as are many of my fellow citizens - that the majority have apparently decided that corporations are people (!!) and, along those lines, just two days ago struck down a 1912 law in my birth state of Montana that was intended to address outside corporate interference in state and local elections. So I was astonished when Chief Justice Roberts, who has slavishly followed the lead of the most radical judicial activists against the interests of the American people, actually voted with the so-called "liberal" justices in upholding the constitutionality of the ACA.

That took a lot of courage in today's very nasty political climate. And I will acknowledge courage when I see it.