Democracy Now!
March 27, 2012
As the Supreme Court weighs whether the Affordable Care Act goes too far, we host a debate on whether the law goes far enough. The case is reviving the heated tensions that surrounded the healthcare reform law in the debate leading up to its passage two years ago. Although support for the measure is often equated with backing the expansion of health coverage for all Americans, there are some who maintain it didn’t go far enough in helping the uninsured. We speak to Dr. Stephanie Woolhandler, co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program, and Dr. John McDonough, who played a key role in shaping Mitt Romney’s healthcare reform law in Massachusetts as well as the Affordable Care Act. The new healthcare law is “going to leave tens of millions of Americans woefully underinsured, with gaps in their coverage like copayments and deductibles, so they’ll still be bankrupted by illness. And it’s not going to control cost,” Woolhandler argues. “So we still need single-payer national health insurance regardless of what happens at the Supreme Court.” But McDonough notes that “the moment when there would be sufficient political will for the Congress and the president to come together and pass meaningful, near-comprehensive reform, that might take another 20 years.”