San José, CA – On Oct. 1, millions of Americans without health insurance overloaded the opening of the Affordable Care Act (ACA or so-called Obamacare) online exchanges. Almost 3 million people tried to log on to the national www.healthcare.gov web site, while the California web site www.coveredca.com had more than 5 million hits.

Fight for single payer government health insurance must go on

On June 28 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld most of the 2010 Affordable Care Act or ACA. In particular, the Court upheld the “individual mandate” that requires people with incomes above the poverty line to buy private health insurance. While the Court did not accept the government's argument that the mandate itself was constitutional, a slim majority (5-4) said that the fine for not buying insurance was like a tax and therefore was constitutional.

Analysis of health care reform

Passage of President Obama’s health care reform in late March made for great political theater. Here was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, skillfully maneuvering the bill through Congress after many had given it up for lost. Here was House minority leader and Republican point man John Boehner, reduced to ranting about ‘Armageddon’ and predicting the end of civilization as we know it if the bill passed. Here were Republican legislators egging on the mob of teabaggers who massed outside the Capitol, hurling racist and homophobic slurs at Representatives John Lewis and Barney Frank as they went inside.

In September, the U.S. government released its annual report on health insurance coverage, showing a continuing decline in private health insurance and the huge number of people who had no health insurance for all of 2008. That same month Democratic senators released their proposal for health insurance 'reform.' However, this proposal could end up as more of a bailout of the for-profit health insurance corporations than a solution to people's health care needs. The best solution for working people, a government run, single-payer health insurance program, was endorsed by the AFL-CIO national convention in September. But this single-payer health insurance plan has been largely excluded from the health care debate by the Obama administration and the corporate media.