The mood was jovial as about 30 activists in town celebrated the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Affordable Healthcare Act on Wednesday.
Celebratory songs and cheering punctuated the meeting, held at the Gaffney Health Services building. Toward the end, one attendee broke into a gospel rendition of “Do You Know the Man from Galilee.”
Groups represented at the meeting included the Charlotte Healthcare Coalition, ActionNC and the League of Women voters among others.
“Today’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling is a tremendous victory for American families,” said Pat McCoy, executive director of Action NC. “Despite our opponents’ relentless efforts to dismantle the law, President Obama and thousands of healthcare advocates like yourselves have stood behind the Affordable Healthcare Act and pressed forward to implement it after its passage.”
The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, requires that every American have insurance or pay a penalty – a tax that the Supreme Court affirmed on Thursday as constitutional. Chief Justice John Roberts, a Bush appointee, sided with the left of the court in the 5-4 decision.
Other speakers at Thursday’s meeting included two college students and Leslie Boyd, who founded Life o’ Mike, a healthcare advocacy group named after her son, who was uninsured when he died of cancer in 2008.
“I’m here to show that uninsured people aren’t bums and they aren’t lazy,” Boyd said.
She added that her son encouraged her to play the “dead-kid card” if it would help the estimated 45,000 Americans who die uninsured every year find coverage.
“We won today. We just saved a lot of those lives today,” she told the crowd.
The Charlotte Healthcare Coalition is an advocacy group formed in 2007 when rumors of healthcare reform emerged from Washington. Carla Cunningham, a nurse at the time, formed a group to discuss the best way to help implement change in the healthcare system. Eventually, Action NC, the NAACP, doctors and labor groups joined. The group met weekly to discuss how to inform the public about healthcare reform. Members staged events such as the Unity March in 2009, which drew over 500 people from across the state.
“We felt like the immoral practices regarding the pre-existing conditions were going to impact so many people,” Cunningham said. “We initially wanted a single payer system but as we realized that the legislation would not be passed, we buckled down and took what we could get.”
This article appears in Jun 27 – Jul 3, 2012.
The fact that all the Republicans are promising to repeal the health care law should be all you need to know about why you shouldn’t vote for a Republican.
They are more interested in Insurance company profits than in YOUR health.
Most people who are against Affordable Care Law have not read it and do not even know what is in it.
Most for it havent either
And to say opponents are against it in order to line th pockets of insurance companies is retarded. With 300 million+ plus americans forced to get insurance, its obama and his cronies using the law to stuff the pockets of insurance companies. Get your realities straight. If he was truly trying to help he would had congress nix the age requirements on medicare/medicaid. Poof, universal coverage with no money going to insurance companies. This law put the final nail in our fiscal coffin. So enjoy
Republicans would have us believe this is bad for America. Is there any doubt that a Romney administration would favor the rich and increase the income gap in our country while leaving millions of our citizens uninsured and unprotected? Mitt is a pariah in Mormon Clothing and will stop at nothing to expand an empire of greed for the rich in this country. Can his sacred Mormon underwear gain him enough donations to buy this election? See for yourself as Mitt dons his tighty-whities sent from the Good Lord Himself at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot.com/2012/05…
Christopher:
The millions of people being forced on the insurance companies are not going to raise their profits all that much. They are the people with pre existing conditions to whom the insurance companies have been refusing to sell policies.
Here is the law if you would care to read it:
http://www.healthcare.gov/law/full/index.html
That said, I agree that opening Medicare and Medicaid to all applicants would have been a better solution. But the Republican solution is to do nothing and they have been fighting hard toward that end for years.
Obama and his Socialist cadre most definately said it was NOT a tax. Now it IS a tax (the SCOTUS said it was). As for being the “Affordable Health Care Act”….there isn’t anything affordable about it. Never in the history of the US has there been a major program that didn’t cost 3-5 times (or more)what they promised it would and didn’t grow well beyond what was promised and even feared. Every single social program the Government currently operates is in dire financial trouble. Liberals somehow believe that despite all this evidence Obama Care will be different. Oh, there is no Easter Bunny and there is no Social Security Trust Fund. I know Liberals hate facts that directly go against their beliefs but there you are.
“They are more interested in Insurance company profits than in YOUR health.”
What do you think Obama is more interested in? Power…Thats what! In one giant fascist swoop Obamacare hands the reins of YOUR health into the hands of Big Pharma, Big Medicine, and Big Insurance…all ultimately controlled by Big Government. You have no clue what is coming down the pike. It reminds me of the statement attributed to the war in Vietnam, “In order to save the town, we had to destroy it.”
This idiot Roberts rightly concluded that Congress cannot regulate economic inactivity through the Commerce Clause, but then turned around and said it does have the power to “tax” that same inactivity…what? What is the difference? Government can’t order you do to something but it can tax you for not doing it? So the Constitution limits direct federal powers but not its indirect powers of taxation. Oh…well, happy day! Now government can tax your activity as well as your inactivity. One way or the other it will impose the policy it wants…Imagine all the inactivity that future Congresses can tax in the name of the general welfare! These new taxing powers will without a doubt become a powerful weapon in the hands of cunning and determined liberals to social engineer their utopian future and impose it on the rest of us. Our Constitutional protections against the tyrannies of authoritarian rule and unlimited government are falling like the leaves in Fall and we are sleep walking through history under the illusion that we are still a free people doing some great and compassionate thing. We are slaves…the manacles are not yet manifested…but they will be!
Perhaps we need to taste the bitter pill of a real imperial president so that we can wake the fuck up and stop taking for granted what so many previously gave their lives to protect for their children and future countrymen.