AFL-CIO: Healtcare Vote Statement

(I just came up from watching and celebrating the vote with my 90 year old dad. He's been waiting for this all of his life, and actually got up and danced a jig. A real live jig! It was a beautiful thing. )



Anyway...



AFL-CIO Statement:

This is what progress looks like. Tonight, by a 220-215 vote, the U.S. House has passed a historic health care reform bill that will improve the nation’s health care system, covering millions of uninsured and making insurance work better for those who have it.

H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, fulfills the decades-long promise to create a system that provides affordable, high-quality health care coverage to nearly everyone. It will break the stranglehold of insurance company greed and cut costs for both families and the country. It will make a real difference for families across the country.

The bill is fairly funded, relying on employer responsibility and a surtax on the highest earners—not a tax on middle-class workers’ health benefits. And it offers the choice of a public health insurance option that can compete with private insurers.

Across the country, a broad coalition of community groups, including the union movement, fought hard and reached out to House members to ask them to pass this critical bill. Thousands of your letters and phone calls helped make the difference.

more: http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/11/07/house-passes-landmark-health-care-reform/

and Obama signs it, it will be much easier to write up other admendments to be voted on and passed that will stiffen this up. Look at how they revised Medicare for the better.

That's why I don't understand all the hysterical foot-stomping about it not being a perfect bill. If just one more thing that was really needed in that bill was still in it, it would've failed. You have to get to first base before you can get home. This is only first base. Jesus.

but he would have gotten us deep into Vietnam.