Letters Extra: GOP health plan was ... what?
Yet the article ends with Blackman criticizing the ACA for having been passed with no Republican support in Congress.
This shibboleth belies any portrayal of Blackman as an objective scholar. It is well established in reliable media (such as a "Frontine" program) that before Barack Obama was even sworn in, Republican leaders in Congress elected a policy of "just say no" to whatever policy the President proposed. This stonewalling even extended to health care reform, even though the President used as his model a private-insurance-based Massachusetts plan championed by a Republican governor who would become the party's 2012 presidential contender.
Anyone benefitting from the ACA — whether that includes coverage for children of insureds until the age of 26, the elimination of life-long caps, equal pricing of premiums regardless of gender, expanded Medicaid coverage (but not in Pennsylvania!), or the existence of a marketplace for private insurance with no consideration of pre-existing conditions — should recall that none of these benefits would have occurred had the Republican party had its way.
Marc Schneier, Wynnewood mschneier@verizon.net