Eugene Robinson: Obama's Great Achievement

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/06/29/obamas_great_achievement.html

Obama's Great Achievement

By Eugene Robinson - June 29, 2012


WASHINGTON -- The political impact of Thursday's stunning Supreme Court decision on health care reform is clear -- good for President Obama and the Democrats, bad for Mitt Romney and the Republicans -- but fleeting, and thus secondary. Much more important is what the ruling means in the long term for the physical and moral health of the nation.

All but lost in the commentary about the court's 5-4 ruling, with Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. unexpectedly joining the majority, is that the Affordable Care Act was intended as just a beginning. We have far to go, but at least we're on our way.

Obama's great achievement is not any one element of the health care reform law -- not even the now-upheld individual mandate compelling individuals to have health insurance or pay a fine. The important thing is the law's underlying assumption that every American, rich or poor, should have access to adequate health care.


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When that next big push takes place, it will be with the underlying assumption that health care should be available to all who need it regardless of their ability to pay -- that it is not a privilege but a right. Progressive presidents since Theodore Roosevelt have tried to enshrine this principle. Barack Obama did it.