Obama’s Long Journey

After much infighting, the U.S. House of Representatives passed President Obama’s health care reform legislation. It’s a victory for him, but his main job now lies elsewhere.

In the end, it finally made it. After more than a year of meandering debate, after concessions here and improvements there, most of which are only really understood by experts, and after a cliffhanger vote, the House of Representatives finally approved Obama’s health care reform legislation. The president can now sign it into law. That’s of enormous significance for the United States — and for his presidency.

Any other outcome would have amounted to a catastrophe. Politically, he needed this victory, or he and his party would have had very little to show when the congressional elections roll around this fall. How much this legislative victory will actually help Democratic candidates is by no means certain. The negotiations were too acerbic to be quickly forgotten by the participants. A majority of Americans are still against his reforms; he hopes that they will come to see their benefits now that they have been enacted. But that might be just wishful thinking.

At the same time, reform was absolutely imperative. It’s a scandal that one-sixth of all Americans have to make do without health insurance. All too often, that means they often don’t seek medical treatment until it’s too late. Or it may mean that health insurers drop patients whose treatments they think are too costly. The new legislation remedies both those grievances. And if the calculations are correct, it will also stem the escalating costs in the American system.

The legislation is admittedly not as far-reaching as it should have been, but it’s a start. Republicans are predicting the downfall of the American way of life and the end of personal freedom to determine one’s own course through life. That’s a grotesque distortion of the intent and effect of the reforms and inhuman to the millions who can’t afford health insurance under the current system.

The outrage will no doubt continue, even though Obama’s signature is barely dry on the new legislation. Tea Party activists refuse to cease calling the reform package Satan’s work, and the Republicans will try to exploit them in the coming election. Conservative governors want to bring lawsuits testing the constitutionality of the new law.

Because of that, Obama cannot spend the coming months defending his very justified and sorely needed reforms. He will be able to take the wind out of his critics’ sails only if he concentrates on jump-starting the American economy and creating new jobs, no ifs, ands or buts. If he pulls that off, there’s hope that he will be able to convince a majority of Americans that his reforms were necessary. But only then.