Tuesday, December 14, 2010

December 14, 2010


A federal district judge in Virginia has ruled part of the new healthcare reform law unconstitutional. That's not exactly a bulletin. Two other federal judges have ruled that the law is constitutional. What this almost surely means is that the Supreme Court, probably next year, will have to resolve the issue.
 
The judge ruled that a provision in the law requiring Americans to buy health insurance was unconstitutional. But again, other judges disagree with that.
When I lived in Britain, years ago, National Health was simply there. The Brits paid for it, of course, but there were no separate fees; they paid for it with their taxes, as they paid for everything else. We didn't use it because my then wife didn't like waiting in line and with a private physician you mostly didn't have to. But friends of mine used it, with excellent results. I came home a big fan.
 
The law Congress passed this year is, I read somewhere, about two thousand pages long. No, I haven't read it. It's been pretty clear all along it would need to be amended and improved as we saw how it worked.
 
I hope this ruling starts that process. National health insurance really is, for us Americans, an idea whose time has come. The rest of the industrialized nations already have it. It's time we joined them.

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