Do you have health insurance?
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In March 2010, Congress narrowly passed a major health
reform law. It requires most employers to provide
employees with health insurance and allows parents to
extend coverage of their children to age twenty-six. It
also creates a fund of nearly a trillion dollars to pay for
health insurance for many people not covered by
employer-paid policies until 2020.
President Barack Obama, who fought hard for thislegislation, compared the battle to the one waged by
Franklin D. Roosevelt sixty-five years earlier over guaran-
teed incomes for the elderly. “When FDR proposed Social
Security, he was accused of being a Socialist,” Obama
observed. Michelle Bachmann, a Republican congress-
woman from Minnesota, opposed the health insurance
proposal for that very reason: “If you look at FDR and
Barack Obama, this is really the final leap to socialism.”
Ann Coulter, a conservative pundit who denounced the
health insurance plan, went so far as to denounce Social