The American Health reforms make history

24th Dec 2009

Today the Senate in America has passed the bill for Health reform.

The campaign to bring healthcare reform to America has been carried out over Decades. It has been a great mystery that the richest country in the world depended on a private Healthcare Insurance system that left many people to suffer because they were unable to afford medical care.

A majority of Americans have now accepted that the risks they all ran of falling into ill health, that the insurance companies would choose not to cover, was simply too great, and that it was in the interests of all to bring about reform.

Our own health system  is 60 years old. Many of us cannot imagine a time without it. so it is worth reminding ourselves just how fiercly this battle has been fought in America. Every democrat voted for the reforms, every republican voted against them.

Sometimes it is worth remembering that things that we can take completely for granted, and complain about because they are not entirely perfect, are there because someone took the trouble to fight for them.  

I wanted to share with you some papers I found in my archives.

These came from the second world war, at the point when our parents were just beginning to think about creating a welfare state and a health service.

It is such a precious thing!