Final Health Care Reform Bill Sent to President Obama

It's a wrap. After a year of contentious debate, threats of violence, lies and gross exaggerations, the ideas contained in the health care reform bill are now the law of the land. It is far from perfect, but it is a start.

An additional 32-million Americans will be provided with health coverage, while insurers will no longer be able to continue the heartless practice of dropping someone when they become sick or not extending coverage because of preexisting conditions. The bill will also reduce the embarrassing and security-threatening federal deficit brought about by Bush's tax cuts to the wealthy.

"We made a promise. That promise has been kept.... From this day forward, all of the cynics, all the naysayers - they're going to have to confront the reality of what this reform is and what it isn't," President Obama said, according to the Associated Press. "They'll have to finally acknowledge this isn't a government takeover of our health care system."

The final chapter came after Democrats had to make some fixes to the bill while Republicans continued on as obstructionists.According to the AP:

The last legislative chapter in the wrenching national debate over Obama's health overhaul plan came Thursday night in the House, as Democrats approved - for the second time - a package of fixes to the sweeping health bill Obama signed two days earlier. The measure includes better benefits for seniors and low-income and middle-class families. In the hours ahead of the vote lawmakers reported isolated threats of violence from a volatile public.The vote was 220-207, as majority Democrats prevailed despite 32 defections and no Republican support. The same bill had passed the Senate earlier in the day 56-43, with all voting Republicans and three Democrats voting "no."

Republicans are still vowing to fight the law. "We need to repeal Obamacare and replace it with policy that will create more access, create jobs, which will lower the cost of health care and not be a government takeover of the health care system," said Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga., the AP reported.

They just don't know when to quit. Instead of working to add their ideas to the bill, they withdrew from the table as a political strategy for the upcoming mid-term elections. Some think that may be a risky strategy. It already cost one conservative commentator his job.

To me, that's placing politics over the importance of human lives. The bill also signals a major attempt at redistributing wealth in this country. That's something that some wealthy people and people who dream they will be wealthy one day, don't want to see.

And that's been one of the major problems in this debate. Everything, including money and politics, has been given a higher status than doing what is right. We are the only major industrial power that does not provide health care for its residents and allows them to lose their homes because of medical bills. That should have been the focus. Period. End of story.