Time will tell... but what will it say?

Less than two years ago, actually one year, ten months and eleven days ago to be exact, on June 25, 2015, those of us who had health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as Obamacare, celebrated when the Supreme Court ruled for the second time that the ACA was constitutional.  Many of us would have lost our insurance if the ruling had gone the other way because the subsidies which helped pay for health insurance would no longer be available in States like Florida, where I live, and any other States that had refused the Medicare expansion or refused to set up its own healthcare exchange.

While the Republicans had continually challenged and attempted to repeal the ACA from the moment it passed Congress and was then enacted March 23, 2010, we always knew we had one solid wall of protection:  President Obama would always veto any attempt to repeal his landmark legislation.  Democrats in Congress had been willing to commit what amounted to "political suicide" in order to ensure that every person had affordable healthcare.  Such a pro-life attitude from the political party that has been so demonized for not being pro-life.  Democrats did indeed pay the price for their votes with losses in the mid-term elections which gave Republicans control of the House of Representatives in the 2010 election and the Senate in the 2014 election.  Still though, we had President Obama to protect us.

During the 2016 election, there was so much on the line.  Healthcare, equal rights, women's rights, just to name a few.  Every vote would matter and every vote would determine not just the future of the United States, but the future of its citizens.  Those of us who understood all that could be lost and all the would be jeopardized did our best to encourage everyone to elect Hillary Clinton.  She would protect the rights we had gained just as President Obama had.  Rights that included the freedom to marry whomever we love even if the one we love happens to be the same sex as us because on June 26, 2015, a decision handed down by the Supreme Court stated that marriage between same sex couples cannot be denied in any State.  Rights that included women making their own choices regarding their bodies and having access to all types of medical care through Planned Parenthood.  Hillary Clinton also understood that the fight for equal rights for all was far from over and we still had far to go.  But one barrier, the highest glass ceiling, would have been shattered with the election of Hillary Clinton as the first woman President of the United States.

As the election results came in on November 8, 2016, those of us who had voted for Hillary Clinton, who looked forward to celebrating her victory and her leadership were shocked that she had lost.  Mixed in with that shock was some sense of dread.  Those of us who depended on the Affordable Care Act for insurance knew that with Republicans in control of the Presidency and Congress there was no one to protect us from losing our healthcare.  No one to protect the millions of people who would suffer, whether they realized it or not, without affordable healthcare.  No one to ensure that people could afford to go to the doctor, pay for prescriptions and not be bankrupted by illness.

Thursday May, 4, 2017, Republicans in the House of Representatives finally achieved what they had been promising since March of 2010.  They passed their own healthcare bill, the American Health Care Act to replace the ACA.  A bill which will negatively affect millions of Americans regardless of whether they have insurance through the ACA, their employers or even Medicare.  The ones who will benefit most from this new bill are the wealthy who will receive a tax cut and business who will no longer have to provide insurance,  Additionally businesses can "shop around" for the States with the lowest basic requirements for insurance coverage.

There is some hope that the Republican controlled Senate will not vote for the current bill but will write their own bill.  If that happens, then members from the House and Senate will meet to write another bill which must then be passed by the House and Senate before reaching the President's desk for his signature.  The hope is that the new bill will not pass the House because of  whatever changes were made.  There is also some hope that the bill would never pass the Senate because no Democrat will vote for the bill.  However by using reconciliation, which would mean a simple majority of 51 votes rather than the necessary 60 votes, Republicans in the Senate could succeed in passing the bill.

Time will tell whether the Republicans will be successful in passing their own healthcare bill before the 2018 elections.  If they have not passed a bill before the 2018 elections, will everyone who will lose healthcare benefits end Republican control of the House or Senate or both?

Time will tell... and in the mean time... millions of people wait to see what happens, knowing their fate is the hands of people who are trying to take away their health insurance.

So time will tell, but what will it say?

We are women... with a long, long way to go

In 1968, the Phillip Morris Company launched one of its most successful ad campaigns when it introduced a cigarette designed for women and used the slogan "You've Come a Long Way Baby" despite the fact that women still had far to go in the fight for rights and equality.  The 1970s were not a time of "hope and change", they were a time of hope for change.  Glass ceilings were not shattered, but little cracks began appearing.  Cracks that would ultimately lead to shattering glass in some places but not all.

In 1970, the Mary Tyler Moore show aired and was considered ground-breaking because it was depicted a single women with a career making her own decisions with no boyfriend or fiance by her side.  When the Mary Tyler Moore Show ended, "Mary Richards" did not marry the man of her dreams and go off to live happily ever after.  Rather she and most of her co-workers had been fired and faced the prospect of finding new jobs.

In 1971, a singer from Australia named Helen Reddy released a song she had co-written entitled "I Am Woman" which would become the anthem of the women's rights movement.  In 1972, the Equal Rights Amendment was passed by Congress and sent to the States for ratification.  The premise of the Equal Rights Amendment was quite simple: women and men would be treated equally under the law.  The United Nations declared 1975 International Women's Year and used Reddy's song as the theme.

One of the many issues women struggled with during the 1970s was equal pay for equal work despite the fact that the Equal Pay Act had been passed by Congress and signed into law in 1963  In 1972, the Mary Tyler Moore Show addressed this issue.  “Mary Richards” discovers that she is being paid less money than the man who had previously been in her position at the newsroom. When she asks “Lou Grant” about the disparity in pay, she is told that the reason she is paid less is because the man needed to make more money. She, of course, is dismayed, but cannot really do anything.

Moore's show was not the only show to address the issue of equal pay.  In 1977, Alice, the comedy starring Linda Lavin, also addressed the issue when Mel hired a man and paid him more money.  The waitresses quit, but came back to work.  Mel's solution was not to give the waitresses more money but to give the man less money.

More woman were elected to office on both the State and Federal level making more and more inroads into places that had previously been male only.  In my former home State of Massachusetts, in the district next to mine, Sharon M. Pollard defeated the incumbent in the 1976 election to become the first woman to be elected to the State Senate from that district and one of five female Senators when she was sworn in to office.

Interestingly some of the biggest opponents to changes for women were women themselves. In the 1970s, Erma Bombeck, beloved writer whose newspaper columns were posted on many refrigerator doors, spoke out in favor of the Equal Rights Amendment, she defined it in the most simple terms, “one size fits all”. Yet not only were there women who opposed her for her pro ERA stand, there were some who accused her of being part of the problem because of her writing. Mary Tyler Moore, whose show was considered ground-breaking in its depiction of a single woman who was not dependent on a man, was criticized for not being more “militant”.

But those were the 1970s and things surely changed as a result of of the women's movement.  Well, in 1995, just twenty-two years ago, the words “Someday a woman will be PRESIDENT” were printed on a t-shirt along with a drawing of Margaret, with a happy expression, from the Dennis the Menace comic strip. Those words were enough to get that shirt removed from Walmart because some shoppers found them offensive. I read about the incident in a magazine. I was stunned to think that in the mid 1990s the idea of a woman being President of the United States offended anyone. I immediately went in search of the shirt which I found at another store. I wore that shirt proudly for awhile then put it away and wore other shirts. Ah, but that was the mid 1990s and things are different now, right?

Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 Presidential election despite winning the popular vote because she did not receive enough votes in the "swing States" to win the Electoral College vote.  She was the first woman to be nominated by a major political party as its Presidential candidate.  There were women who objected to being told they should vote for her just because she was a woman.  I certainly understand their position.  I would not vote for a woman just because she was a woman.  As Senator John McCain found out when he chose Sarah Palin, women do not vote for a candidate just because she is a women.  Ironically though, some women will vote for for a candidate just because he's a man.

But back to Hillary Clinton and women objecting to being asked and/or told they should vote for her because she was a woman.  Hillary Clinton was not "just a woman" running for political office.  She was the most qualified, most prepared and most ready to lead candidate that this country has seen in our lifetimes.  The fact that a candidate so well suited and prepared for office was a woman should have drawn women to support her cause, not rally women against her because they felt they were being asked to vote for her "just because she was a woman".

Oh they will say that there were other reasons they refused to support her.  That she was flawed.  That she never should have been the candidate in the first place and on and on and on.  But regardless of what they say, she was the first woman who had the best chance to shatter that highest glass ceiling.  She was far more qualified than her male opponent.  While there were many factors which contributed to her loss, the fact that she is a woman placed more obstacles in her way and imposed unbelievably high standards on her which men have never experienced.

On the day after the inauguration of the current President, there was a massive Women's Rights March held throughout the country.  One reason for the march was that with the election of the current President and Republicans controlling both the Senate and the House of Representatives, women's rights were on a fast track to be reversed.  One of the people who attended the Women's Rights march in Los Angeles was Helen Reddy and yes, she sang "I Am Woman".

Ah yes, "I am woman, hear me roar in numbers too big to ignore", the opening lines of that song.  But she did not sing all the verses.  One of the lines from the verse she did not sing was:

"But I'm still an embryo with a long, long way to go until I make my brother understand..."

Forty-six years after Helen Reddy's song was released, women are no longer embryos.  But we still have "a long, long way to go..."