The Daily Background
| Let’s pass this bill already.
by Arlen Parsa
In light of word that Senate Democrats have reached an agreement that all 60 Senators can vote for, I feel compelled to re-visit what I wrote about health care reform in late July, on the heels of what I perceived as major watering down at the time:
My general feeling about the current status of health care reform making its way through Congress right now is: let’s just pass something better than what we have now and continue to make it better later. Despite their differences and varying inadequacies, all of the proposals debated by Congressional Democrats are better than what we’ve got now, which is pathetic.
As Obama says, let’s not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If this whole thing goes down in flames, as Republicans are whispering excitedly, it could be the end of Obama’s big initiatives, and nobody wants that (well, except for the Republicans obviously).
Yeah, that sounds about right. Let’s not forget how far government programs we take for granted today have come since their initial incorporation.
For example, Medicare has undergone over a half-dozen major expansions since its package. And let’s not forget the major expansion to SCHIP which Obama just signed into law this year. But the most compelling example is Social Security, which is today far, far better than it was when it was originally conceived of: the original Social Security bill only covered factory workers; today all working Americans are eligible for its benefits once they reach their age of retirement.
I’m confident that, like other comparable pieces of legislation, this bill will steadily get better as time goes by. And we may not have long to wait, either: it’s improvement will start just weeks from now when the bill reaches conference committee with the bill that passed the House of Representatives and both visions for health care reform will have to be merged with the other. Now, this won’t likely yield a public option, but it will improve the bill from where it stands now. And every improvement is a step forward.
