History will judge Obama's health reforms

By Graham Cooke

When United States President Barack Obama signs his landmark Health Reform Bill into law he may pause to ponder the words of one of his predecessors, Lyndon Johnson, at a similar turning point in American history.

As Johnson put his signature to the Civil Rights Bill on July 2, 1964 - legislation initiated by the assassinated John F. Kennedy but which he single-handedly bullied through a dubious Senate, he is reported to have remarked to an aide "this will lose us the South for a generation".

He was overly-optimistic. Although he won a landslide election victory later that year, before the enormity of the changes had sunk in, Johnson's Democrat Party produced only one president in the next 24 years, and it was only with Obama's election in 2008 that there were serious signs voting patterns in the states of the former Confederacy had begun to shift.

But the Civil Rights Act, and the later Voting Rights Act, ending discrimination which for almost a century had prevented most southern blacks from voting, remained on the statute books and over the course of time changed America, and changed it immeasurably for the better. Johnson, whose name is still associated with, and to a great extent besmirched by, the Vietnam War, will nevertheless eventually be remembered as one of the great reforming presidents.

There is every indication Obama may be heading down the same track. He has the tail-end of an unpopular involvement in Iraq and the seemingly endless war in Afghanistan to deal with, while his health care reforms have been labelled as 'socialist' by some opponents. It is an accusation considered laughable in Australia and most other Western developed countries, but which has powerful resonance in the United States.

Unfortunately for Obama and the Democrats, the 30 or more million Americans who will benefit the most from these reforms also tend to be non-voters, while those who face a rise in taxes to pay for them, will certainly be casting their ballots in the November mid-term elections and again in 2012.

The legislation still has some hurdles to surmount as the grimly opposed Republicans take their arguments probably all the way to the Supreme Court, where its constitutionality will be challenged.

However, it is now probably inevitable that a century after a Republican president, Teddy Roosevelt, first advocated it, the United States will finally have a universal health care system in place.

Health will always be a contentious issue. Conservatives in Australia will continue to rail against the perceived inefficiencies and fiscal waste of Medicare and seek subtle ways of watering it down when they have the chance, but they would not dare abolish it; Britons complain incessantly about the National Health Service, but no one seriously suggests it should be dispensed with.

As time passes the same will happen in the United States. A service as fundamental as universal health care, once offered, can never be withdrawn.

I certainly do not wish to see it, but there is a very real chance the Democrats are going to face another long period in the wilderness and Barack Obama will be a one-term president as a direct result of health care reform.

If this is so, I believe that history will eventually judge the sacrifice to have been worthwhile.