After years of working a thankless job, more than 1,500 home healthcare aides in New York got some long overdue recognition this week, along with a $1 million paycheck in a landmark legal settlement.

The lawsuit involved home health aides working for a private provider of care to seniors and people with disabilities in New York City. The main allegations centered on a typical problem in the home care workforce–getting shorted on wages and overtime pay, thanks to huge gaps in labor protections. McMillan’s Home Care Agency, according to the suit, “consistently underpaid its workers and never paid overtime, despite frequently working more than 60 hours per week.”

When the legal challenges to the Affordable Care Act first started taking form, the assertion that Congress did not have the power to regulate the health insurance industry under either the Commerce Clause or the Necessary and Proper Clause was largely seen as an academic argument that had percolated in law schools thanks to a robust presence of the Federalist Society. After all, how could an industry that accounts for approximately 16 percent of economic activity in this country be said not to affect interstate commerce?

A building and loan association, like the Bailey Brothers’ in It’s a Wonderful Life, uses the savings of its members to provide mortgages to the depositors. Members essentially pool their money to give each other the opportunity to buy cars and homes. But Mr. Potter scoffs at such “charity.” The GOP does the same with Social Security, Medicare and other programs that pool the nation’s wealth to help the middle class.

Washington’s Old Boys’ club still has its knickers in a wad over the deficit “compromise,” but women across the country can breathe a slight sigh of relief this week. The White House just issued health reform guidelines that will mandate insurance plans to provide birth control to women at no extra cost. The measure is long overdue, part of an array of preventive services recommended by the Institute of Medicine for improving women’s health. But the promise of broader contraceptive access coincides fittingly with the debate over the nation’s budget woes, because birth control is an economic issue.

Everyone loves to pick on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and well they should, having been written by and for the health care industry. We must keep the pressure up on the health care industry as long as its fiduciary responsibility to investors requires finding ways to avoid caring for the sick while sucking billions out of taxpayers’ pockets.

Nice going, Rahm.

The special interests, all aligned against the urgent needs of the American people, are spending $1.4 million a day so that they will prevail and we won’t.