In Defense of the Affordable Care Act

  The institution of healthcare in the post modern era has become problematic, much like that of slavery during America's revolutionary period.  With equality and human dignity the battle cry in the Age of Enlightment, our founding fathers excluded addressing the issue of slavery at the Philadelphia Convention, although some colonial governments and state constitutions had taken small steps toward curbing it.  During the immediate post revoluionary decades a growing consensus among the nation's leaders (including some slave oweners themselves) that slavery was a doomed institution of labor, failed to materialize legal measures to universally end its practice. James Wilson, of the Pennsylvania ratifying convention  predicted the inevitable emancipation of all slaves in the nation, and in 1774,  Benjamin Rush thought "there will be not a Negro slave in North America in 40 years."  Nevertheless, this enormous problem of democracy was left to fester until its catastrophic end.

  Is  a similar mistake being made by pursuing the repeal of the Affordable Care Act?  Who can deny that the rapidly accelerating cost of healthcare is not monumental?  Will our nation's leaders (both present and future) really dismantle this comprehensive effort toward a solution, for the sake of those who profit from the status quo? Really?  Does the "Now is not the time; let's rethink this thing" argument not resemble the attitude held by many lawmakers  prior to the Civil War in regard to slavery and those who stood to profit from it?

  The vestige of racism in the aftermath of emancipation lingers today, but one can only imagine the ramifications brought about by the absence of a national healthcare system that insures us all with medical coverage.