Historic Health Care Reform Bill Signed into Law

After months of wrangling and heated debates, President Barack Obama delivered on his campaign promise to make health care affordable to Americans by signing Tuesday a historic health care reform bill into law.  While the newly-signed law does not provide for a single payer system being pushed by progressives, it is lauded by many liberals and democrats as a step toward sweeping health care reform.

The most important features of the law include health insurance coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, protection of the insured against abuses from insurance companies (such as uncontrolled increase in insurance premiums), providing affordable insurance to the more than 30 million uninsured Americans through insurance exchanges and government subsidies, removal of lifetime limits on health insurance benefits, a cap on out-of-pocket expenses, tax credit for middle class families to afford health insurance, expansion of the medicaid program, substantial reduction in prescription drug prices to cover the gap under the Medicare prescription drug plan (called donut hole), among others.   

Even as now, however, a number of States, through their respective attorney generals, have filed lawsuits to challenge the constitutionality of the law, arguing that the federal government does not have the power to mandate individuals to purchase health insurance.  Constitutionalists, however, believe these suits will fail because the US Constitution empowers Congress under its commerce power to regulate health care.