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The Supreme Court is about to hand down its decision on the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, either upholding or rejecting Barack Obama's biggest presidential achievement, and affecting the lives of every single citizen in their access to health care and relation to the government.
It's been almost 900 days since Obama singed into action comprehensive health care reform in 2009, and a lot—a lot—has gotten said about it since. Here, on the morning of the Court's decision, are the five most important things to remember.
1) The PPACA extends health care to approximately 30 million people, with half of those coming via expanded rights, such as coverage for people with preexistence conditions or allowing kids up to the age of 26 to stay on their parents' insurance plans; some of it comes from the expanded Medicare and Medicaid provisions. Taken together, this is the biggest piece of social legislation, both in terms of legislative significance and real, palpable effect on people's lives, since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society run.
2) The PPACA does not increase the deficit. Rather, by reducing the aggregate cost of health care over the next decade, it should actually lower the deficit. How? By giving more people access to health care, we will be able to treat them before whatever their health problem is becomes serious, read: expensive.
3) The individual mandate began as, and remained for almost two decades, a conservative idea, courtesy the Heritage Foundation. When you hear the many, many conservatives figures going off about the unprecedented unconstutionality of Obamacare, remember that the Heritage Foundation had no problem with its constitutionality for about 20 years.
4) There are no, and never were, any death panels. However, Sarah Palin got her wish and had sections of the bill removed merely because she decided they sounded Death Panel-y-ish.
5) Republicans have nothing with which to replace Obamacare. If it is overturned, we're back to square one.
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