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this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2025
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So the best thing the Democrats could do when they had a super majority was pass the Republican healthcare plan? And you don't see why that's a problem?
Technically it was a more conservative version of the Republican healthcare plan...
But that comment also incredibly misrepresents how long Dems have held dual majorities, which is a much bigger issue.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Congresses
Yes. Sadly, it was RomneyCare, and the very first thing VP Biden did in negotiations was throw out the public option as a pre-concession to republicans. They hadn’t even begun debating the bill yet.
Biden was the VP at that point but yeah fuck that shit
Oops, fixed, ty
Who said anything about dual majorities?
It was literally based on Mitt Romney's healthcare bill in Massachusetts. Unless you think the guy that ran on the Republican ticket AGAINST Obama wasn't a Republican.
Romney was indeed a Republican, but a moderate one. The Church of Latter Day Saints has always been a weird outlier in American politics, and as a Mormon Romney largely follows that tradition. Utah itself is a great reminder that the trends Americans see with the two-party system, where every issue is a binary choice with the GOP or DNC each picking an option, the reality on the ground is more complicated.
It's also worth looking to how Romney was the first senator in US history to vote to impeach his own party's president. He did it again the 2nd time Trump was impeached too, along with a handful of others.
That's not to say that I like Romney at all, or even that I like the ACA or even that I like the Democrats.But Romney is perhaps the furthest left Republican and created that initial bill with the intention of being a bipartisan compromise. He's far closer to Neoliberal than Nazi. And while it was the foundation, his bill was NOT the final bill that passed into law. The bill that did pass saw 100% of Republican senators vote against it. It passed 220-215 in the House with 1 meaningless Republican vote. To say it was a Republican bill is simply historically inaccurate.
The criticism is valid but antiquated. It was Romney's healthcare framework for Massachusetts, and Obama (in typical fashion) led with a compromise to attempt to avoid a fight with conservatives and conservative democrats. By agreeing to private insurance mandates and not even fighting for a viable public option, I agree that Obama really missed a once-in-a-generation opportunity.
The reason why it doesn't make sense now to level the criticism that it's a "Republican healthcare plan" is that we've shifted several Overton windows to the right since then. A "Republican healthcare plan" in 2025 is an uninsured ER visit, where they are allowed to turn you away; you die in the street, after which your surviving family is billed for the corpse cleanup.
That compromise with a group that had been screeching about hiw they won't work with you for the previous 15 years is exactly how we got to where we are today.
Yes, for sure. While everyone else was in realpolitik mode, it seemed clear to me you don't start a negotiation with a bad faith opponent by ceding your strongest position.
Obama governed as a centrist, and while I agree he probably escaped unscathed without any long-term ill will because of it, he squandered a ton of opportunities. Oh, and we got Trump as a reaction to the GOP's boogeyman propaganda anyway.
Calling another user a Russian bot is a civility violation so your comment is removed.
But further, the reason Obamacare is often called "a Republican plan" is two-fold:
First, there's not a lot of daylight between Obamacare and what Mitt Romney implemented in Massachusetts as "Romneycare". Democrats would like to believe otherwise, Republicans would like to pretend otherwise, but there it is:
https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/romneycare-vs-obamacare-key-similarities-differences/
"you guys had a proven model that we built the Affordable Care Act on this template of proven, bipartisan success. Your law was the model for the nation’s law.” - Barack Obama.
Second, unlike universal health care, Obamacare forced people into the clutches of the for profit health care system when, ideally, it should have eliminated it. Forcing people to give money to companies is a Republican bulwark, not a Democratic one.
My apologies if a crosses a line with the comment, but calling the ACA Republican is demonstrably and factually false and, in my opinion, actively spreading disinformation.
The bill passed the Senate 60-39, with 1 abstaining. All 39 Republicans Senators voted against it. It passed 220-215 in the House with only 1 Republican vote.
If you want to say it wasn't enough, that's completely fair and I would agree. If you want to say the Democratic Party, both back then and today, is dominated by Neoliberal interests and suppresses Progressives or Socialists or whoever else then I would also agree. But none of that was the conversation- the bill that passed was demonstrably not Republican.
No, I'm saying that Barack Obama, the architect of the plan, straight up told everyone he based it on Mitt Romney's health care plan in Massachusetts.
That's what people mean when they say "Republican Plan". It's a copy pasta from Mitt "Corporations are people, my friend" Romney.
Then why didn't Republicans vote for it?
And not just votes. Republican Attorneys General across the country tried to get it overturned in the courts. The House and Senate Minority Leaders have quotes strongly against it. Romney himself did not hold any office at the time the ACA was passed, but was preparing for his next presidential campaign. He described it as "an unconscionable abuse of power...the act should be repealed".
If you look more closely at the Massachusetts state government in 2006 when Romney was governor and passed "Romneycare", you'll find that the state Senate was dominated by Democrats 34-6, while the state House was dominated by Democrats 139-20-1. There's a much, much stronger case that Romneycare in Massachusetts was a Democratic piece of legislation than there is that the ACA was Republican.
The Republicans had plenty of control of the federal government before Obama, and their plan of "leaving Americans with nothing* was already in place. That's what the Republicans voted for in 2010 by voting against the ACA.
Because Obama proposed it, they opposed anything with Obamas involvement.
It was absolutely a Republican bill. The Democrats tried to implement universal healthcare in 93 but the Gingrich controlled House shut it down. If Obama and said he wanted to offer a tax break to first time gun owners, the Republicans and Fox News would have called it a communist plot to create a Democrat controlled militia. The Republicans are only ever interested in obstruction