It's Obamacare.

[ProSense]

15. The Next Real Fight for Obamacare Will Be in 2014

The Next Real Fight for Obamacare Will Be in 2014

Richard Kirsch

Progressives must get out in front of the battle to preserve the biggest expansion of the social safety net in decades.

It's been 100 years since ideological conservatives joined with doctors and insurance companies to kill the first movement in the United States for what was then called "compulsory health care." Now, on the eve of their epic loss, those who deeply hate the idea that we have a collective responsibility to care for each other are desperately trying to stop history's clock.

Beneath the tested rhetoric from opponents like the Heritage Foundation and Texas Senator Ted Cruz about a government takeover or Obamacare killing jobs and the economy, we can find expressions of the driving force behind the right's obsession. One telling quote is from Missouri State Senator Rob Shaaf, who declared, “We can’t afford everything we do now, let alone provide free medical care to able-bodied adults.” Another is the proud statement from Steve Lonegan, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in New Jersey, who told me in a debate on Obamacare at the FDR Library, “I only care about me and my family.” <..> celebrations of extreme individualism are bald expressions of the "47 percent of Americans are takers" ideology that has become the driving fixation of Republicans, with the latest example being the vote in the House to deny food stamps to 4 million people because they are unemployed.

The right most fears the establishment of another new program based on our common humanity...If this is a defining moment for the right, it is also for the left. As Jonathan Chait wrote this week, in a great restrospective on Republican opposition to the ACA, “The transformative potential of Obamacare is not a conservative hallucination.”

For all its faults, the Affordable Care Act is the biggest expansion in half a century of the progressive belief that we all do better when we all do better. Almost 50 years ago, Medicare was greeted by Ronald Reagan – then a mouthpiece for the American Medical Association – as a foot in the door to a totalitarian takeover. The right has long understood how high the American view of the role of government would be lifted if people came to rely on government for something as essential to a person's well-being as health care.

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http://www.nextnewdeal.net/next-real-fight-obamacare-will-be-2014

Rand Paul: Subsidizing Health Care Of Fed Workers=Unconstitutional-Yet He Relies On It For Himself
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023715751