David Coates

June 12, 2014

Winning in November by Defending the Affordable Care Act Now.

Lindsey Graham’s recent warning that Republicans might yet push for a presidential impeachment serves to demonstrate, if further demonstration was still required, of just how brutal Washington politics could get if his party ends up in control of both Houses of Congress after the mid-term elections in November. In progressive terms, the achievements of the […] read more »
October 9, 2013

Placing the Affordable Care Act in the Wider Debate on Healthcare Systems

              Right now, hysteria inside the Republican Party about the flaws of the Affordable Care Act is running very high indeed. So high in fact that Representative Todd Rokita (R-IN) was not treated as mentally insane by his party’s leadership last week for denouncing Obamacare as “one of the most insidious laws ever devised.”[1] […] read more »
October 1, 2013

Exactly how is the Affordable Care Act an affront to freedom?

 In all the understandable cacophony about the shutdown of government, the underlying trigger to that shutdown – Tea Party opposition to the Affordable Care Act – is in danger of falling out of the public spotlight. But that must not happen. The government is being shut down for a reason, and we need to examine […] read more »
April 9, 2012

Taking the Republicans to Task: (4) On Health Care Reform

              As we await the verdict of nine Supreme Court Justices on the constitutionality of all or part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), it is worth asking what the remaining Republican Presidential nominees would create in its place. We know that they would have to create something, because each is committed to the […] read more »
January 21, 2011

Defending Health Care Reform – Again!

It has been very difficult in these last few days to decide whether or not to respond to the House Republicans’ first major political initiative of 2011 – their introduction and passing of the Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act. read more »
May 4, 2010

Chapter 6: After the Vote

Several key developments immediately followed the passing of the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” on March 21 2010. Details of the Act became readily available on the website of the Kaiser Family Foundation, where you can also see a comparison between the various bills canvassed in 2009, and a comparison of the Act as […] read more »
March 22, 2010

Health Care for the Ages: Initial Reaction to the Passage of Health Care Reform

Yesterday (March 21 2010) was a good day. The House vote for health care reform was a good vote. It started us on a journey towards universal health care. It threw up a road block against some of the most egregious practices of the insurance industry. It established the principle that when you’re healthy you […] read more »
March 21, 2010

Before the Vote: Commentary on the health care debate before March 21 2010

The importance of health care reform was brought home sharply by data released February 20th, showing that in June 2009 48.9 million Americans were enrolled in Medicaid programs country-wide, an increase of nearly 3.3 million on the number in June 2008 (This data from the Kaiser Family Foundation, reported in The New York Times February […] read more »
February 19, 2010

Chapter 6: The Story in 2009

A lot of water has passed under the health care reform bridge since Answering Back went to press in March 2009. The spine of developments since then has been Congressional – the long and hard-fought struggle to turn the Obama commitment to health care reform into actual legislation. That struggle was initially anchored in the […] read more »
November 23, 2009

Chapter 6: Introduction

The Issues Over 2009 as a whole progressed, a potential consensus emerged on what President Obama referred to as at least 80 percent of what was needed: no denial of coverage because of pre-existing medical condition, help to the low paid and the small business sector to buy basic health care for themselves and their […] read more »