Sunday was the 4th anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, a moment well worth marking. The ACA, for all its flaws, is already making lives better for many millions of Americans, and as it gets more established will continue to do so. Tom Harkin has referred to the ACA as a "starter house," that first small home a young family buys that helps them start building a foundation to eventually buy or build a better house. That will hopefully be the story of the ACA: over time, progressives will continue to battle and win more and more improvements, and make this a better and better law. This is what happened with Social Security and many of the other best laws in American history- they started out modestly, but kept getting improved over time.
I thought that this video from The Undercurrent was worth sharing with folks, because Ethan Rome does such a great job talking about the importance of the ACA and what comes next. He also talks about the thinking behind his old organization, Health Care for America Now (HCAN), forming to fight for health care reform and then choosing to disband after the job was done. As a co-founder of HCAN, I have been very impressed with what the organization was able to do during the long, drawn-out, deeply painful fight to get the law passed, and the equally painful process of getting the law implemented. And I am also quite impressed that the organization's leadership was willing to vote it out of existence when its work was done, because once an organization is established, its leaders very rarely relinquish it, even if the organization has accomplished what it set out to do. HCAN made this decision, even though it is never easy.
The interview is a also fun because The Undercurrent's host, Lauren Windsor, is having so much fun with the interview, and Ethan is just rolling with it and playing along. It makes it very entertaining to watch, much more so than your average interview on the ACA. Take a look, and don't forget to sign up for health care - the deadline is only a week away!
