From the right, the remarkably disciplined contingents of Republicans in both Houses of Congress have made the dubious strategic choice to be counted against whatever the administration wants by threatening filibusters, tacking on crippling amendments, or merely voting in lockstep opposition.
To those of us who have watched for decades with dismay and disdain the feints, the parries, the false starts and the ultimate failure after failure of health insurance to move beyond Square One, the mere existence of this law is nothing short of a minor miracle.
Certainly the bill President Obama signed is not the legislation many of us would have preferred. There are legitimate questions concerning whether it is reform at all, rather than a restructuring of the health care insurance industry, which it indeed more closely resembles. But those who contend that it would have been better had we stood pat and done nothing are plain and simply wrong.
Some 32 million Americans who did not have at least minimal health insurance must acquire it, or pay a fine, and this is certainly Change with a capital 'C'. And if it is still found unaffordable, the federal government will pick up the tab.
The courts will have to determine the constitutionality of requiring people to purchase health insurance from a private carrier and whether or not the much cited "precedent" of requiring automobile insurance constitutes a valid basis for comparison. A glaring difference is that one can opt out of the latter by simply not driving, but the alternative for opting out of health insurance is clearly unacceptable, if not horrendously extreme.
There is doubt, however, concerning how vigorously private insurance companies might want to contest the constitutionality of the law, considering how preoccupied they will be by writing all of those federal government-guaranteed new bare bone health policies.
But the bigger picture is that the United States has finally been dragged kicking and screaming into conformity with all other industrialized nations, which do indeed have health insurance for all of their citizens.
Single payer government health insurance would have been more in line with the so-called more developed world. But when the health insurance industry was invited to participate in writing the bill, the red flag went up that single payer was out of the window. The last has not been heard about single payer health insurance in the United States; it is destined to fly right back into the window, the only question being how soon.
In capitalism -- how can we phrase this delicately? -- money talks. And the United States has advanced, or at least stretched, capitalism to its optimum, some would say beyond its limits. Here money not only talks, it dominates the conversation.
Despite the credit card industry making a mockery of what was once the crime of usury, despite the despicable criminality perpetrated by the Milkens and Madoffs, despite the necessity to bail out our nation's once thriving, impossible-to-be surpassed automobile industry and the bailout one-by-one of our most revered financial institutions, American capitalism survives and there was never any real question that it would.
Once upon a time in the wild and woolly west, bandits could gallop into town on horseback and rob a bank by waving a pistol in the frightened face of a teller. During prohibition, gangsters backed up their heists of bootleg whiskey supported by tommy guns. But the take on the best days of the desperadoes of Dodge City and Capone's gang in Chicago was mere chump change compared to the hauls of their contemporary counterparts in their three-piece suits who don't need six-shooters or automatic weapons, though Ivy League MBAs are sometimes useful.
The recent Wall Street implosion, which saw financial houses and car manufacturers sink into the morass of their own poor judgment and insatiable appetite for ever more obscene accumulations of unearned wealth was not as much a failure of capitalism as it was a failure of its gatekeepers.
Legislation is now required to impose strict rules and regulations on the way once-revered financial institutions conduct their business and the provisos must be backed by serious enforcement to ensure that they toe the line.
There are those who will insist that capitalism can only work when it has no constraints whatsoever, that the market must be completely, totally unfettered for it to seek its own level.
The problem with this thinking is that it runs counter to the very genius of the Founding Fathers who saw this country as one governed by the rule of law.
The more devious capitalists comprehended the problem and proceeded to wrap themselves in the flag, hiring the best politicians, preachers, publicists and promoters that money could buy to convince the public that anything-goes capitalism is as American as apple pie. Therefore, anyone suggesting that capitalism must be reined in and abide by rules and regulations along with the rest of society can be expected to be called socialists or communists by those who have been brainwashed so thoroughly that they often enough campaign and vote against their own best interests.
Jefferson's admonition regarding the price of liberty applies as well to what is needed to save Wall Street from itself: eternal vigilance.
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