Remember healthcare?

Remember how in The Untouchables, Malone (Sean Connery) kept saying to Ness (Kevin Costner): And what are you prepared to do about it? Well, this week, some provisions of the healthcare reform bill kick in. To wit, from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch via the Kaiser Health News web site : "Insurers can no longer deny coverage for children under age 19 because of pre-existing conditions. Checkups, immunizations and other basic preventive health care will become free for many people with health coverage, although many others will fall through a loophole. If you get seriously sick, the insurance company can't cancel your coverage because you forgot to tell them about the hangnail removed five years ago. Coverage can still be canceled if you deliberately lie about something important on your insurance application, but not for accidental omissions. Lifetime coverage limits disappear, and annual coverage limits start to fade away. There's a stronger appeals process for when insurance companies deny care." Don't those all sound like pretty good things? Well, in this election season, what are the Democrats prepared to do about it? Obama is giving a speech Wednesday touting the new measures. But what else? See, if this were the Republicans, they'd have a whole huge strategy. Not just one presidential speech, but a string of appearances; at each one, a child cancer survivor or an elderly dialysis patient whose coverage had been denied and was being restored; et cetera. You get my drift. The problem is the Democrats who voted against the thing in the first place, which makes it impossible for the party to speak with one voice. It still shouldn't prevent the vast majority of Democrats who backed these changes and fought damn hard for them to try as hard as they can to turn the law into a positive over the next six weeks. It's shameful for Democrats to run away from this law or be half-hearted about it.