Republicans are hellbent on repealing Obamacare although many of them have benefited from the program.
Republicans have campaigned for years on repealing the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. Signed into law by President Obama on March 23, 2010 – Obamacare played a huge role in the 2010 midterm elections which proved disastrous for Democrats. Calling it “one of the worst Democratic defeats for 70 years,” The Guardian reported at the time that: “Republicans pummeled their opponents, capturing the House of Representatives and a fistful of Senate seats.”
Obamacare played a huge role in the 2012 elections, particularly in the wake of the June 2012 Supreme Court ruling “upholding the individual mandate requiring most Americans to obtain health insurance.” This was seen as a huge win for the Obama administration at the time, as reported by Fox News:
The court’s decision to uphold the individual mandate and almost all of the health care law is a much better outcome for the Administration politically than invalidation of all — or even part — of the law. Indeed, it comes at the end of an especially bad month for Obama and stems the bloodletting that has been going on for most of June.
Ezra Klein called Obamacare “the most important issue” of the 2012 election in an article published by The Washington Post in late October 2012.
If Obama is reelected, Americans who lose their jobs needn’t fear that their families will lose their health insurance. Discrimination based on preexisting conditions will be a thing of the past, and every state will have a health insurance exchange where insurers compete for business and where regulators can expel shoddy health plans. Medicare will continue its transition from the fee-for-service model toward a system of value-based payments in which providers are compensated for maintaining healthy patients. Expensive employer-based health plans will be slapped with a hefty tax beginning in 2018.
If Obama is reelected, in other words, we will see the first iteration of a uniquely American universal health-care system.
At the height of the presidential campaign The Nation published an exclusive article reporting that Paul Ryan had submitted a written request to the Obama administration asking that a clinic in his district receive a grant made possible by Obamacare.
In an obvious snub to Republicans, The Nation tweeted a photograph of Ryan’s letter along with a link to their 2012 article in the wake of renewed efforts by Republicans to repeal Obamacare and in light of the recent failure by Senate Republicans to pass even a “skinny repeal” of the program.
That time Paul Ryan quietly requested Obamacare cash https://t.co/CxnknPJDfB pic.twitter.com/RxhpOuorvc
— The Nation (@thenation) July 28, 2017
As The Nation reported in late September 2012:
Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan is barnstorming the country, promising to repeal every provision of the Affordable Care Act if the Romney-Ryan ticket is elected. But a letter he wrote to the Obama administration may undermine this message.
On December 10, 2010, Ryan penned a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services to recommend a grant application for the Kenosha Community Health Center, Inc to develop a new facility in Racine, Wisconsin, an area within Ryan’s district. “The proposed new facility, the Belle City Neighborhood Health Center, will serve both the preventative and comprehensive primary healthcare needs of thousands of new patients of all ages who are currently without healthcare,” Ryan wrote.
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