When Did Obamacare Start
The timeline of key events leading up to the passage of the Obamacare law began in 2009. Here is a list of those events, along with key provisions that went into place after the law was enacted.
- Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and a group of Democrats from the House of Representatives reveal their plan for overhauling the health-care system. Its called H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act.
- ;Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, a leading supporter of health-care reform, dies and puts the Senate Democrats 60-seat supermajority required to pass a piece of legislation at risk.
- ;Democrat Paul Kirk is appointed interim senator from Massachusetts, which temporarily restores the Democrats filibuster-proof 60th vote.
- ;In the House of Representatives, 219 Democrats and one Republican vote for the Affordable Health Care for America Act, and 39 Democrats and 176 Republicans vote against it.
- In the Senate, 60 Democrats vote for the Senates version of the bill, called Americas Healthy Future Act, whose lead author is senator Max Baucus of California. Thirty-nine Republicans vote against the bill, and one Republican senator, Jim Bunning, does not vote.
Poll: Obamacare More Popular Than Ever
A sign in favor of the Affordable Care Act is held up outside the Supreme Court building after the courts ruling in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, June 28, 2012. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the core of President Barack Obamas health-care overhaul, giving him an election-year triumph and preserving most of a law that would expand insurance to millions of people and transform an industry that makes up 18 percent of the nations economy. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
BLOOMBERG NEWS
The Affordable Care Act wins 55% support among the public for its highest rating since becoming law nearly a decade ago, according to the latest Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll released Friday.
Kaiser said the clear majority of support is the highest in more than 100 polls the nonprofit health foundation has conducted. The ACA was signed into law in 2010 by President Barack Obama and has expanded health insurance coverage to more than 20 million Americans.
The recent uptick reflects strong support among Democrats, 85% of whom now express favorable views, Kaiser said in its analysis. A narrow majority of independents also view the law favorably. While most Republicans still hold unfavorable views towards the ACA, the poll suggests that Republican voters have largely moved on from efforts to repeal the ACA and now rank opposition to a single-payer government health plan like Medicare-for-all among their top health priorities.;;
Lesson 1: Replacing Obamacare Will Remain A Struggle Without A Clear Replacement Plan Or Goal
On one of his last days in office, President Obama, in an interview with Vox, issued the Republican Party a clear challenge. Now is the time when Republicans have to go ahead and show their cards, he said. If in fact they have a program that would genuinely work better, and they want to call it whatever they want they can call it Trumpcare or McConnellcare or Ryancare if it actually works, I will be the first one to say, Great.
I suspect, Obama continued, that will not happen.
So far, the former presidents prediction has proven right. Republicans have struggled over the past six months because they never came up with a clear replacement plan that the public actually wanted.
The day before Obamacare was signed, Republicans decided they would not campaign only to repeal the new health care law. They would instead vow to repeal and replace it with a more conservative health policy.
The repeal and replace message was a concession that simply promising to return to the days before Obamacare was unrealistic. But it also committed them to coming up with a plan of their own and that part never happened.
After Republicans swept the House, the Senate, and, finally, the White House, they still had no clear replacement plan. The GOP had spent seven years running a scorched-earth campaign against Obamacare, while turning a blind eye to the deep divisions within their own party on the replace part of their pledge.
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Lesson 5: The Drive To Repeal Obamacare Is Strong And Often Underestimated
Early Friday morning, bleary-eyed reporters couldnt see the path forward on Obamacare repeal and replace no matter how hard they squinted. The Senate hadnt just rejected one health care bill it had rejected four different options, all the repeal bills it had going into this week.
This means Obamacare repeal-and-replace efforts are in a hard place. But it does not mean they are over.
It is true that three Republican senators voted against the skinny plan to repeal Obamacare. It is also true that 49 Republican senators voted for that bill.
There is a strong drive in the Republican Party to deliver on the campaign promise they’ve made for seven years, and if we’ve learned anything in this process, it is that this drive cannot be underestimated.
Within moments of the bill’s failure Friday morning, the conservative Heritage Action group released a statement arguing that “Repealing and, ultimately, replacing Obamacare will require moderate Republicans to come to the table and follow through on their repeated campaign promises.”
House Republicans, meanwhile, continue to hold out hope for a path forward. Vox’s Tara Golshan was at the conference’s regular Friday meeting this morning, where she spoke with conservative Freedom Caucus Chair Rep. Mark Meadows . He was already talking about paving a new path forward, citing a yet-to-be-seen bill from Sens. Graham and Bill Cassidy.
Republicans Learn The Limits Of Reconciliation With Failed Aca Repeal
With late night drama not often seen on the Senate floor, Republicans latest attempts to pass a bill repealing the Affordable Care Act failed last night, thanks in part to a divide the partys congressional leaders, especially in the Senate, could simply not bridge.
At the end of the day, however, individual Senate Republicans concluded that even if leaders had judged that repealing Obamacare was in the best interests of the party collectively, they could not support the different proposals drafted to actually get there. This was perhaps most true of Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski , who opposed beginning debate and all three alternative proposals considered this week. There were also, however, 11 other senators who voted no on at least one of the alternatives offered this week. While some of those votes may have been strategic, as members knew that the proposal would not ultimately be enacted, they do help illustrate the persistent divides within the Republican Party about the best way to proceed on health policy. In an era of high party polarization and a well-sorted electorate, this kind of cross-pressuring, where whats good for the party is not necessarily good for the individual member, is less common than it once was. But as the experience of the last few months suggests, those situations can still and do arise.
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Gutierrez Says Hundreds Of Republican Amendments Were A Part Of Obamacare
Republicans continue to sell their health care plan in an effort to deliver on a party-wide campaign promise to repeal and replace Obamacare. Yet during a roundtable discussion on State of the Union, Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., pushed back on charges of Democratic obstructionism regarding health care legislation.
Anchor Jake Tapper asked if Gutierrez was involved, or if;Democrats were;just sitting by the sidelines opposing everything.
Very different process, Gutierrez replied. 2009-2010, lets remember, hundreds of Republican amendments were adopted in the ACA.
We decided to look into Gutierrezs claim that the final version of the Affordable Care Act incorporated hundreds of Republican amendments.
When the ACA was making its way through Congress, former President Barack Obama made a similar statement in September 2009. During a joint address to Congress, he said that his plan incorporated the ideas of both Republicans and Democrats. We rated that claim Mostly False, because many of the amendments Republicans introduced were technical in nature.
Republicans had several opportunities to introduce amendments to the Affordable Care Act, in both the Senate and House bills. Ultimately, for procedural reasons tied to the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., the Senate version was the only one that moved forward. But Republicans offered changes in the committees that considered the bills before the whole chambers voted on them.
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Trumps Promise To Repeal Obamacare Is Now In Limbo
President Donald Trump expressed disappointment after Republican lawmakers’ failure to muster enough votes to repeal Obamacare placed one of his loftiest campaign promises in limbo.
A series of defections by Senate Republicans scuttled two separate efforts to dismantle the sweeping U.S. health care law put in place by Trump’s predecessor, President Barack Obama.
“We’ve had a lot of victories, but we haven’t had a victory on health care,” Trump told reporters July 18, as it became clear the latest Republican legislative efforts would fail. “We’re disappointed.”
A slim margin of error constrained GOP efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare and forced a delicate balancing act between the party’s conservative and moderate members.
But defections by Sens. Jerry Moran of Kansas and Mike Lee of Utah on July 17 brought to four the number of Republican senators to publicly oppose the bill , effectively killing the repeal-and-replace plan. Senate leadership could only afford to lose two Republican votes for passage.
Senate Republicans then turned their attention to a measure that would repeal major parts of Obamacare over two years, in theory buying lawmakers enough time to agree on a replacement plan before the Affordable Care Act, often called Obamacare, was largely dismantled.
“I did not come to Washington to hurt people,” Capito said in a statement. “I cannot vote to repeal Obamacare without a replacement plan that addresses my concerns and the needs of West Virginians.”
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Republicans Give Up On Obamacare Repeal
Most GOP lawmakers arent interested in another failed effort to gut the health law in an election year.
02/01/2018 11:45 AM EST
WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W.Va. Republicans are giving up on their years-long dream of repealing Obamacare.
Though the GOP still controls both chambers of Congress and maintains the ability to jam through a repeal-and-replace bill via a simple majority, there are no discussions of doing so here at House and Senate Republicans joint retreat at The Greenbrier resort. Republicans doubt they can even pass a budget providing for the powerful party-line reconciliation procedure used to pass tax reform last year, much less take on the politically perilous task of rewriting health care laws in an election year.
I dont think leadership wants to, said Sen. Bill Cassidy , who worked with South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham on a last-ditch repeal effort last fall. In the sense of Graham-Cassidy, a partisan exercise? Doesnt look like it.
Republicans’ decision to abstain from another attempt at gutting Barack Obamas health law at least this year goes back on a pledge the party has made to voters since 2010. And it underscores how Republicans overpromised in their ability to reform the nations health care and never fully recognized how divided the party is over key Obamacare planks like protecting pre-existing conditions and preserving the laws Medicaid expansion.
On Groundhog Day Republicans Vote To Repeal Obamacare
met at the White Housetold reportersfeelWashington Postreported
The House is scheduled to vote Tuesday on overturning President Obama’s veto of legislation to repeal Obamacare and defund Planned Parenthood. The vote, appropriately scheduled for Groundhog Day, is expected to fail, leaving conservatives to gear up for a final year of budget fights with the president.
PostscriptUpdate
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Support For The Affordable Care Act
Then along comes Donald Trump and threatens to cut off subsidies for low-income Americans, ostensibly as a method to force Democrats in Congress to come to the negotiating table. A New York Times editorial summarised it: It sounds more like a two-bit Hollywood villain promising carnage if he doesnt get his way. Holding his own voters hostage to prove a point is not really the best political move for someone elected by a combination of low-wage workers from rural and industrial America and high-income families. But the Republican health plan what pundits are labeling TrumpRyan care advocates decreasing financial support for those worse off while decreasing taxes for the rich. And just to top it off, support for the ACA is currently at its highest point ever with 55% of Americans approving of it a complete reversal prior to the November election.
Even one of the most conservative columnists in the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer a nonpractising psychiatrist wrote a column in April where he admitted that the ACA had changed the zeitgeist. It is universalising the idea of universal coverage. Acceptance of its major premise that no one be denied health care is more widespread than ever.
Now, how is that for progress!
Republicans Who Think Nobody Would Miss Obamacare Should Ask People Who Depend On It
Some of the Republicans agitating to repeal Obamacare say they arent worried about taking health insurance away from more than 20 million people. Their theory: The program is wildly unpopular and even the people with coverage wouldnt miss it, no matter what takes it place.
People have crappy insurance, Rep. John Shimkus told Politico last week. This fear that theyre going to lose something that they dont think they have anyway is crazy.
Anna Meyers would beg to differ.
Meyers, 42, lives in the eastern part of North Carolina. She and her husband, 59, have been getting insurance through healthcare.gov for the last three years. Meyers also has a son, 14, who has autism. He gets coverage through Medicaid a program that Republicans say they would like to shrink just as soon as they are done with Obamacare.
Meyers works as an office manager for an accountant. Her husband does repair work for a company that manages rental homes. Between the two of them, she figures, their income is about $40,000 a year maybe less when his business is slow.
We dont get to go out to the movies a whole lot, Meyers explained to me on the phone. But we do travel a lot on the weekend, in our car, and see some of the bigger towns in the area just to get out.
Also, there is date night once a week. They drop her son at her parents house, and then bring home takeout. Smithfields Chicken is a favorite.
The Majority Of People With Obamacare Seem To Value It
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Trump Signs Executive Order On Obamacare; Impact Unclear
On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that gave federal agencies broad authority to defer or delay any part of the Affordable Care Act that costs anybody any money.
More formally, the order tells agencies they can “waive, defer, grant exemptions from, or delay the implementation of any provision or requirement of the Act that would impose a fiscal burden on any State or a cost, fee, tax, penalty, or regulatory burden on individuals, families, healthcare providers, health insurers, patients, recipients of healthcare services, purchasers of health insurance, or makers of medical devices, products, or medications.”
That’s a mouthful, but what does it mean, and how far does it go to repeal Obamacare?
Larry Levitt, senior vice-president at the respected and neutral Kaiser Family Foundation, said in a series of tweets that while the impacts are unclear, it shows the administration is “moving to unwind the Affordable Care Act, but it won’t be immediate.”;
Levitt added, “One sure outcome is it creates uncertainty for insurers at a critical time.”
Health care analyst Sabrina Corlette at Georgetown University echoed Levitt’s point.
“For insurers already uncertain about their future in the Affordable Care markets, the uncertainty this executive order generates doesn’t help,” Corlette said. “At a minimum they’ll have to factor it into their 2018 premiums, which are due to be filed by May 3 in most states.”
But that hasn’t happened yet.
Why Mccain Screwed The Gop On Obamacare Repeal Again
His friendship with Lindsey Graham was less important than his grievances with the process.
By BURGESS EVERETT and SEUNG MIN KIM
09/22/2017 06:34 PM EDT
Not even 24 hours after John McCain dramatically tanked a Republican effort to repeal Obamacare in late July, his best friend, Lindsey Graham, started working feverishly in private to try again.
Graham whos never shown much interest in health care policy quietly trekked to the White House with Sen. Bill Cassidy to try and sell President Donald Trump on their latest proposal that would transform Obamacare into a block grant program for states.
It seemed like an afterthought at the time; Obamacare repeal was all but left for dead. But momentum behind the so-called Graham-Cassidy plan snowballed this month. The unexpected passage of a fiscal deal well ahead of schedule freed up valuable floor time. And McCains stated openness to the bill combined with his friendship with Graham raised hopes within the GOP.
Ultimately, his friendship with Graham mattered less than McCain’s grievances with the lack of scrutiny and lack of bipartisanship surrounding the bill.
Ive never known John on something he believes strongly to defer to a friend, said Charlie Black, a longtime adviser who speaks to McCain regularly. The GOP leaderships view that McCain would buckle under new pressure or reverse course because Graham was involved didnt make sense to me, Black added.
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