How did we get Obamacare?
No one was happy with the status quo of healthcare, with escalating costs, fewer insurance choices and increasing premiums. Claims denials were more common, and if you changed jobs, or (for smaller businesses), changed insurance companies to save money, many were refused coverage for pre-existing conditions. Shortly after Bill Clinton took office in 1993, Hillary Clinton spearheaded a disastrous proposal, dubbed “Hillarycare” that never got off the ground.
Under George W. Bush, after the inherited 2000 dot.com bubble crash, followed by 9/11 8 months into his presidency, and the Afghanistan and later Iraq war, healthcare took a backseat, other than the passage of the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, which gave us federal government subsidies for the cost of prescription drugs starting January 1, 2006. The Republicans seemed to be content with letting the insurance companies virtually take over control of medicine, and the Democrats couldn’t push their dream of government controlled medicine with a President who would veto any bill, and control of the Senate and House only beginning in 2007.
In 2008 Barack Obama was elected president, and had control of the House and a filibuster proof 60 to 40 seat majority in the Senate. This was important, because according to Congressional rules, in the House a simple majority was sufficient to pass any law, while in the Senate, cloture (any further discussion regarding the bill is eliminated, and forces a vote) requires 60 votes. Without 60 votes, the minority could prevent any vote from taking place. With a majority in the house and 60 votes in the Senate, passage would be assured.
The House was well into working on The Affordable Health Care For America Act, when on August 25, 2009, Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy passed away, robbing the Democrats of their filibuster proof supermajority. This created a big problem for the Democrats, because if the House bill was passed and brought to the Senate, without 60 votes, the Republicans could filibuster and prevent passage. To compound matters, Scott Brown, a Republican, was elected to fill the seat of the deceased Ted Kennedy in a special election January 19, 2010.
Scott Brown was the first Republican elected Senator in Massachusetts since 1978, and the first Republican to fill that particular seat since 1952 when John F. Kennedy was elected. He specifically campaigned as the 41st vote against Obamacare. The Affordable Health Care for America Act would be dead in the water in the Senate. So, the Democrats had to resort to shenanigans.
Although the Senate had begun work on its own proposals, they instead took up H.R. 3590, a bill regarding housing tax breaks for service members. The constitution requires that all revenue related bills must originate in the House, so this bill was chosen since it was first passed by the House as a revenue related modification to the Internal Revenue Code. They then completely revised the content of the bill, erasing a bill that had been passed by the House, and replacing it with the Senate’s own Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (commonly known as Obamacare). Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, deemed the bill passed, not needing 60 votes, since it was not “a new bill but an amended old bill”. The House Democrats were not completely happy with the bill, but they agreed to pass it as long as it was subsequently amended. The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act was then drafted, and since it did not deal with budgetary matters, it could be filibuster proof.
Then there was a rush to pass the bill – it could not wait! It was passed by the House on March 21, 2010, by a 219-212 vote, with 34 Democrats and all 178 Republicans voting against it. The vote took place on a Sunday. None of the Congressmen or Senators had even read the whole bill (2700 pages). Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, (D-CA) remarked on March 9, 2010 “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what’s in it.” It was signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010. Not a single Republican either in the House or in the Senate voted for Obamacare. The amendment bill “The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act” was also passed by the House on March 21, 2010. The Senate passed it by reconciliation on March 25, and it was signed into law by Obama on March 30.
Obamacare was the law of the land, against the will of a majority of the population, according to polls. In future posts, I will review the implementation, court challenges, and my personal experiences dealing with the consequences of Obamacare.