This Tuesday morning, I stopped at the Broadway Lights diner for a snack and there on the TV, was our President Obama, speaking to a crowd in the East Room. As I sat there, I got to witness him signing the landmark legislation that will affect everyone who has ever dealt with health insurance. That would be most of us.Barack Obama, after thanking a number of key players in forming this legislation, signed this historic health care overhaul that is expected to guarantee coverage for an additional 32 million currently uninsured Americans. I watched the House proceedings on CSPAN Sunday night and had to laugh at some of the rhetoric from some of the Representatives. I know that after showing their true colors during that session, many of them will have trouble back home in November. I loved the "Baby Killer" shout-out by Randy Neugebauer of Texas at Bart Stupak. Good stuff.
The Freeman pulled a good quote from the ceremony from the President: "With all the punditry, all the lobbying, all the game-playing that passes for governing here in Washington, it's been easy at times to doubt our ability to do such a big thing, such a complicated thing, to wonder if there are limits to what we as a people can still achieve. We are not a nation that scales back its aspirations. We are not a nation that falls prey to doubt or mistrust. We don't fall prey to fear. We are not a nation that does what's easy. That's not who we are. That's not how we got here."
Watching this on the screen in the company of wait staff and some customers, It was quite surreal; considering everyone was pretty much in the working class category that this reform bill is intended to help. It's just odd knowing that there are people out there who truly believe this is the worst thing for Americans. That doing nothing would be better.With decades of complete Republican control in both houses and the White House, there was little attempt to even mention reformation of health insurance, never mind act on it. Now, with the reality of just the opposite, there is action. Granted, it's not perfect. The bill is not the optimum "end all" reform bill that many of us wanted, but it's a terrific foundation of change in in a system that was destined to bankrupt most middle income households by the end of this decade.
After the President recited his list of the more immediate actions that the bill will provide, he sat down, signed the bill into law with a dozen pens and prompted thunderous applause by an audience overcome with jubilation, for rarely is it seen that something in Washington ever reaches some assemblage of completion. With the Reconciliation bill still heading toward the Senate, this occasion is about to set the election cycle into a very different outcome.
5 comments:
What is telling is the comment yesterday on ABCs NightLine from the conservative David Frum where he states: For so long, we in the GOP thought FOX worked for us, now we realize we work for Fox.
Washington Post #HCR calculator is really cool and REALLY eye opening. A must see for all haters.
http://tinyurl.com/ye8tcbg
I am going to reserve judgement until I see the financial impact on me, good or bad. So I am not celebrating at the present time.
But rest assured, if this turns out to be a dismal failure fraught with corruption and fraud I will loudly proclaim that I was against the current reform and I was from the beginning. No lie there.
THIS MOMENTOUS DAY!
Not 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.
Wow, the protections for children with pre-existing conditions are NOT in the bill they just passed? Children with PECs aren't covered today? You mean the Progressives in the democratic party lied to us?
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