When I got a message on my Blackberry early this afternoon that the good folks over the pond in the US of A passed a Health Care reform bill and nonchalantly relayed the information to my friend, an immigrant from New England, he looked at me as if I was living on a different planet.
“Get the F@#k out of here”, was his exact words. Then he began to tell me the story about how it was a choice between our NHS and the “nightmare system” over in America which practically decided which country his newly formed family settled in.
“So Obama actually did it”.
It was at that moment I finally understood what this year long protracted debate actually meant. As a British citizen who has grown up within a socialist medical system, you don’t realize that a country which is very similar to your own, with families not much different to your own family had not much choice but to consider Healthcare as luxury not a necessity.
My conversation with Jez put things into prospective, if the numbers coming out of the Senate are true, 30 million more Americans are going to have affordable access to Health Insurance and Insurance companies are not going to able to drop people because of pre-existing conditions (going by the Senates Bill of course). To get a bill like that passed, in a very partisan legislature and in a tense political climate has got to be testament to Obama’s political skills.
To realize that a public option couldnt pass in the Senate and effectively kill it in order to move on shows how much Obama saw this process for what it is – a historic moment for America, not an ideological war. Something that the Clintons failed to understand.
Just a normal everyday bloke writing about films.