Campaign for America's Future
May 30, 2013
Our Continuing Healthcare Crisis, Part 3: The Obamacare Scorecard
By Richard Eskow
(This is Part 3 of a series on our ongoing – and worsening – national healthcare crisis.)
Conclusion
We’ll be
updating this “scorecard” as its provisions take effect, but one thing’s
already clear: While the law does some good things, it will only
marginally improve upon a fundamentally broken system.
Comment:
In this article, Richard Eskow of Campaign for America's Future scores
the effectiveness of several features of the Affordable Care Act
(Obamacare) as it is being implemented. His take is that Obamacare
provides only marginal improvements to a "fundamentally broken system."
The importance of this observation is that it comes
from a prominent and respected organization that provides strategy for
the progressive movement. They provided crucial support to Health Care
for America Now! (HCAN), a coalition of over 1000 organizations
dedicated to achieving quality, affordable health care for all.
HCAN was part of the massive shift of progressives
away from single payer to the "politically feasible"
Clinton/Obama/Edwards version of the conservative reform model of the
Heritage Foundation. They were distracted by the concept that if we
could just get a public option, we would be well on our way towards
achieving a truly universal, affordable system. Little did it matter
that the public option would not have been much different from a
traditional Blue Cross/Blue Shield plan. It would have been only a
marginal improvement, if that, on a "fundamentally broken system."
We can't back up history, but we can assess where we
are now, where we are headed, and, most importantly, where we need to
go instead. Now that more individuals in the progressive community are
acknowledging that Obamacare can have no more than a marginal impact on a
"fundamentally broken system," we need to dump it and enact a single
payer national health program - an improved Medicare for all.
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