Sullivan's Gets Personal on Obamacare

Andrew Sullivan offers a personal take on the effects of the ACA on The Daily Dish.

Since I spent part of today at the doctor’s and at a radiology center, and was using my Obamacare insurance, it was hard not to reflect on this. (I’m on the mend.) I don’t have an ideological position on healthcare – I can see the great benefits of the American private sector, but also its staggering inefficiencies – but I do hold as a pretty core belief that healthcare is not like other goods. It is the condition that allows us to enjoy all other goods. And we live in a golden age of medicine, in which my chronic HIV, a death sentence when I was diagnosed, can now be managed, my chronic asthma treated, and my apnea kept at bay. I seriously believe that a wealthy society that allows people to be sick and not have access to care is a disgrace to humanity. And so I believe that the ACA’s signal achievement already in reducing the numbers of the uninsured is a crucial step in the right direction.

Politically, this leads me to a simple conclusion. The GOP offers nothing that can achieve anything like this. They are content that working Americans have to suffer sickness on a regular basis, without care and with health problems metastasizing until they are both far more expensive and far more intractable. They have lied, distorted and confused millions with their propaganda on this. And it should sicken anyone. So, yes, at this point there is a moral difference here between the two parties – a glaring moral difference. And of all this president’s considerable achievements over the last six years, this one we will remember for decades to come. You want to call me an Obama sap for that? Make my fucking day.