My take:
It's a step in the right direction. IFF would know that the American state was set up to make passing legislation difficult. The sheer scale of this type of reform was bound to involve considerable amounts of compromise and horse trading. As a result, this is not a piece of legislation to get entirely smitten with. However, that does not preclude this new legislation from getting better. Policy initiatives are never right at the beginning. They are usually always involved and iterative processes which change, adjust, improve the framework over time to account for changing political, social, and economic environments. That will be the case with this bill. At this point criticizing this bill for what it does or doesn't do is perfectly acceptable. But judging this bill based on its initial state is silly. It will change, as have all major policy advancements in western democracies. Understanding that, I am cautiously optimistic.
From a self-interested Canadian perspective I have little concern if the U.S. wants to eat their own with health care coverage. Sure extending it to everyone is essentially a good thing. What I care about however is the other side of the ledger. Rising health care costs are a structural economic issue that will need to be addressed that will have large impacts on Canada. We succeed so long as the U.S. succeeds. At minimum, a sustained currency devaluation due to health care costs is a certainty if the current rate of growth continues.
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