We won’t go back.
Republicans are opening new fronts in the war on healthcare, and rewriting their battle plans for the 2014 elections with a focus on opposition to the president’s reforms.
But we won’t go back to letting insurance companies deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. We won’t let them kick young adults in their early twenties off their parents’ plan. We won’t let them take away free birth control as preventative medicine with no co-pay.
The real problem isn’t the modest but still life-changing reforms of the Affordable Care Act (despite its botched rollout). Millions of people have already been helped — people with pre-existing conditions, young adults who get to stay on their parents’ plan and beneficiaries of the Medicaid expansion.
When it comes down to it, this most recent fight is about the power of predatory insurance corporations. Insurers sold to a small percentage of Americans junk plans that were so bad they fall below the threshold of what’s acceptable under the Affordable Care Act. The fact that greedy insurers are confusing customers for profits is exactly why we need a real solution like Medicare for All.