House passes historic health care bill; Tea Baggers threaten to blow up hosptials

So the long awaited day has finally arrived America, health care is now considered a right in our great country and not a privilege, after members of the House voted in favor of moving forward with President Barack Obama's historic health care legislation late Sunday night.

Just before the vote, Speaker Nancy Pelosi secured the remaining votes to ensure passage as Democrats voted 219-212 to send the legislation to the president's desk. Not a single Republican supported the measure.

"We will be joining those who established Social Security, Medicare and now, tonight, health care for all Americans," Pelosi told House members as she brought the debate to a close.

The bill, which was a life-long goal of the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy, will finally get rid of insurance companies right to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions, reduce the budget deficit by $1.3 trillion dollars over the next two decades and ensure health care for more than 30 million Americans through mandates and entitlement subsidies, among a number of other measures to ensure Americans of all ages can obtain quality, affordable health care. While Americans can expect to see many of the reforms enacted within the next three to six months, a number of other reforms will take three years to implement.

"This isn't radical reform, but it is major reform," Obama said after the House vote.

After all of the fear perpetrated by the Republican party has faded, I think we will remember this health care bill as one of the most important pieces of legislation in our country's history - for what could be more important than protecting our own people from the money-grubbing swine's who run the insurance companies. In terms of the angry opposition, which included  Tea Party activists shouting racial slurs and anti-gay remarks and spitting on Democratic Congressman over the weekend, we must remember that all of the great pieces of legislation in this country have been passed under harsh opposition from the right (i.e. Medicare, Social Security and Civil Rights) - all of which most Americans today could not imagine living with out.

While a many weak minded Americans will continue to oppose the health care bill, due to lies that have been perpetrated by Republicans and members of the nutty right-wing media, the rest of us finally will be able to know that our government will no longer allow big insurance companies to decide our fate through health care. No longer will 40,000 Americans have to die each year because they were denied health care or could not afford coverage. No longer will women and children be dropped because of preexisting conditions. These are not evil reforms, these are reforms that will help curb costs and make the system more efficient for all of us, even those that oppose it. And at the end of the day its about protecting every American from a broken health care system.

I think it is time for all Americans, even the Tea Party nuts, to take a step back and look through all the smoke screens and think about all of the lives, including their own, that will be saved because of this piece of legislation. Is the bill perfect, not by any means, but will it go along ways to curb costs and ensure health care is a right and not a privilege for all Americans, "you betcha."

The president is expected to sign the bill Tuesday and it could take a week for Senate Democrats to pass amendments to the bill by the House through reconciliation. After that, millions of Americans will be able to sleep easier at night, knowing that their families are safe from bankruptcy and death, because our government decided to finally stand up for the people and not the insurance companies.

"We proved that we are still a people capable of doing big things," Obama said. "We proved that this government - a government of the people and by the people - still works for the people."

What the bill will do for you:

    * Small businesses will get tax credits to help them cover employees. Seniors will get rebates on prescription pills, closing the so-called donught holes in Medicare.

    * Within six months insurance companies will not be able to drop people who get sick. Children will be able to stay on parents insurance until they are 26, and can not be denied because of a preexisting condition.

    * Most people, who already have health insurance through their employers, will not be affected. Almost everyone who is uninsured will be required to buy coverage, or face penalties.

    * Low income people will get subsidies or be eligible for expanded Medicaid coverage.

    * Starting in 2014, people who don't have insurance through their jobs will be able to buy insurance in new state run insurance exchanges.

    * Premiums will be capped at a percentage of income ranging from 3 percent to 9.5 percent.

The Last Lion: Kennedy dies at 77

The last lion is dead. And I am not talking about the feline. I am talking about the man, Sen. Ted Kennedy, whose finger prints can be found on most every major piece of legislation in the United States for the last 40 years. Whether it was civil rights, health care, education, labor, poverty, immigration or an array of other issues that bind us all, Kennedy has left an imprint on all of our lives, rich or poor, black or white, educated or uneducated, that none of us can deny.

Born in 1932, Edward M. Kennedy was the youngest of nine children in a prominent Irish-American family living in Boston, MA. For much of his early life, Kennedy was shadowed by his two older brothers, John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy, but in time he would surpass them both as politicians by passing more than 300 laws and writing more than 2,500 bills in his 46 years in congress.

However, prior to his success, Kennedy was a rising star in the Democratic Party in 1969, until a tragic accident marred any chances of him ever becoming president. In July, after leaving a banquet on Chappaquiddick Island, Kennedy drove his car off a bridge. He would survive the accident but 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne would not. Following the crash, Kennedy failed to alert the authorities - saturating him in controversy - and angering Republicans who felt he got away with murder. Kennedy would eventually plead guilty to leaving the scene of an accident.

To Kennedy's credit, he did not run from the anger directed at him over the incident, but rather he took it head on, speaking openly on national television about his mishaps concerning the accident and asking the Massachusetts electorate whether or not he should stay in office - receiving a favorable response. A few weeks later he would be forgiven by Kopechne's mother and in 1970 won the support of his state by winning reelection. For Kennedy, it was just another tragedy in a life that had already seen the death of his sister, nephew, three brothers and his own near death experience after a plane crash left him with a broken back.

After being given a second chance, Kennedy did not step back into the shadows of embarrassment like most would have, but rather he rose above his mishap to pass some of the most important legislation in American history, including the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the National Cancer Act of 1971, the Federal Election Campaign Act Amendments of 1974, the COBRA Act of 1985, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, the Ryan White AIDS Care Act in 1990, the Civil Rights Act of 1991, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, the Mental Health Parity Act in 1996 and 2008 and the State Children's Health Insurance Program in 1997. He also became one of the most important and well respected leaders in the United State Senate, due in part to his ability to bring Republicans and Democrats together, not to mention his intense work ethic and his expertise as a legislator. After all of Kennedy's mishaps during his early life, he grew as a person and changed into a man that turned tragedy into prominence.

But what might have been Kennedy's most important trait was his curiosity and compassion for his fellow man.

He came from privilege although you would have never known it by the way he fought for working class folk and those stricken by poverty. He saw no room for discrimination and spent much of his life fighting for others civil liberties that even included being one of the first advocates for gay rights, not to mention being instrumental in eliminating segregation in America. In many ways, the America we live in today is as much a product of Ted Kennedy as it is any other legislator in American history. He has instituted the laws that all of us hold so dearly to our hearts, because they are the ones that guarantee our freedoms, while other politicians are attempting to take them away in the face of their own political gain.

In the 21st century he continued his legacy by voting against the invasion of Iraq, which he called the "best vote" he ever cast. He fought for universal health care, which became the driving force in his political life, claiming health care as a right and not a privilege. And in a time of fleeting hope, he passed the torch onto a new leader, Barack Obama, who he believed embodied the Kennedy ideology that America could always do better. In many ways he was a voice for the voiceless in America.

While Kennedy's life has been marred by as much scandal as it has praise, and with good reason, in the end there is no doubt that Edward M. Kennedy is an American Hero, who took the ideology of his family and turned it into a lasting legacy that his brothers never lived long enough to complete. While Joseph, John and Bobby's faces now live in our minds as nothing more than still life's in a distant time. Teddy's legacy and the laws that he instituted will continue to touch our lives until the end of time.

"The work begins anew. The hope rises again. And the dream lives on." Sen. Ted Kennedy (1932-2009)