Those most affected by this unnecessary, "financial elite induced" crisis are the poor and vulnerable. When the economic crisis plays out all of its ugly effects, these vulnerable will now have at least access to what is most important next to food and shelter: health care.

I may have to correct myself. Many of the poor in the US may in fact already have lost their primary shelter and food stamps may be soon running out or becoming less (32 million people dependent on food stamps was the last count). Just think, if you have to watch your dears be unattended when they are sick, that is the worst that can happen to a human being.

Health care is one of the basic needs, that since the seventies is considered a basis for a proper livelyhood and a requirement to enable people to take part in the economic process. This is what was being said vis-a-vis the developing countries in Asia , Africa and Latin America.

It is apparently difficult to understand for some of us, who are privileged. However, I consider this a very late, but still extremely important step forwards in what still is known as the leading country in the Western Hemisphere.

History will talk a lot about this question. How could the richest country in the world wait so long to give its entire population medical coverage?