Over the last few months I have been working with different groups to ensure that New Jerseyeans know about the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and to sign up by the March 31st deadline. I am one of those folks who believe that our "unalienable rights.....life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" are made far more possible if we're healthy enough to enjoy them. Call me crazy, but I believe in an America that looks out, rather than looks over one another.

This law is critical to the millions of beneficiaries of the ACA. Our neighbor's families who have been excluded from insurance because of high premiums or preexisting medical conditions. Our low-income neighbors who have been made newly eligible for Medicaid. Our most vulnerable seniors who will be receiving a new subsidy for prescriptions, and our mothers, sisters and female friends granted the legal right to affordable maternity coverage for the first time. This is the promise of the ACA, and the premise embodied on our National seal, "E Pluribus Unum", "Out Of Many, One".

A healthy society and one with more insured will lesson the financial burden of uncompensated care that all Americans subsidize. This will promote greater economic possibility as well as a healthier society. This in my opinion is good medicine.