Health Care

Peter Suderman | From the December 2024 issue

When the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, passed in 2010, it wasn't because anyone thought it was a particularly good idea. It was just the plan that was left after most of the parts that would make various interest groups mad got sanded off. It wasn't a good plan—it was just the plan that Congress could pass.

Obamacare was written and developed in the shadow of Hillarycare, the '90s-era Democratic plan to expand health coverage. The main knocks on Hillarycare were that it was too complicated and too disruptive. The plan, which never received a congressional floor vote, stalled after a series of articles, attack ads, and even a flow chart displayed on the floor of Congress turned public sentiment strongly against it. In the public imagination, Hillarycare was a confusing bureaucratic mess, not a salve for America's health care woes.

Critics also zeroed in on another point: Hillarycare would not safeguard existing health care plans. If you liked your health insurance or your doctor, you couldn't keep your health insurance or your doctor.

What Democratic politicians and policy wonks took from this was that Hillarycare failed because........

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