This week a bunch of very popular aspects of the new health care reform law are taking effect. The president has been out-in-front this week, trying to remind voters that these provisions are part of the law that Republicans are currently promising to repeal. The New York Times covers the very real and positive effect these new provisions will have in the lives of real people:
Sometimes lost in the partisan clamor about the new health care law is the profound relief it is expected to bring to hundreds of thousands of Americans who have been stricken first by disease and then by a Darwinian insurance system.
On Thursday, the six-month anniversary of the signing of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a number of its most central consumer protections take effect, just in time for the midterm elections.
Starting now, insurance companies will no longer be permitted to exclude children because of pre-existing health conditions, which the White House said could enable 72,000 uninsured to gain coverage. Insurers also will be prohibited from imposing lifetime limits on benefits.
I have no doubt that public opinion will shift in the coming years on the law (history is on our side in that matter), but it is unclear if any of this will dramatically shift public opinion by November.
Then again, so what? Political scientists will tell you political parties exist to win elections–which is true. But they also exist to implement policies. Men and women, by and large, don’t go into politics simply to get elected. If that was the case, we would never have politicians voting for unpopular provisions or disregarding local polls and voting with their party bosses. So if we lose in November, we lose. Pundits will say HCR and the stimulus played a role–and they probably will. But again, so what?
