Using the example of the Affordable Care Act, Kevin Twine’s column (”Making Sausage,” June 16), provides a good analysis of the complexity involved in shaping legislation. He looks at the variables of division of power, popular support, citizen initiatives and the influence of big money. There is an impor- tant message in the Churchill quote he cites about Americans taking a “long time” to do the “right thing” in his exhortation to “keep trying.”
Taking a historical perspective, the struggle for a woman’s right to vote took a “long time.” Susan B. Anthony co-founded the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869. She died in 1906, having de- voted her life to the cause. It wasn’t until 1920 that the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was rati- fied, which stated that, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”
Given the fact that more than 46,000 Americans die each year due to lack of access, health care must be seen as a right. The ACA has extended that right to more people. In amendment language, the ACA currently might read, “Residents of the United States have the right to health care provided or subsi- dized, EXCEPT single adults earning poverty wages whose states have opted out of Medicaid, EX- CEPT for young adults whose parents do not have family policies, etc.”
The struggle for universal access to health care WITH NO EXCEPTIONS has been continuing for a long time. It is a moral imperative on the state and federal levels to “keep trying” to do the “right thing.”
Jean Sawyer
Brunswick
Letter to the Editor, Brunswick Times Record, June 24, 2014