Pres. Obama's Inside Story on the Rocky Road to Obamacare

Here's a story worth reading: how the U.S. got -- if not universal health care -- something close after a century of trying and failing. For fans of sausage-making, it's a fascinating glimpse inside the factory, excerpted in the 11/02/20 issue of The New Yorker. The general story is well-known, but it is worth remembering how close we came to not getting an Affordable Care Act at all. 

With "about six in ten of the public say[ing] they or someone in their household suffers from a pre-existing or chronic medical condition, such as asthma, diabetes, or high blood pressure," the most popular provision remains the prohibition against discrimination by health insurers based upon preëxisting conditions. (Kaiser, 12/18/20) And now that the wildly unpopular individual mandate has been rendered completely toothless by the tax reform legislation in 2017, the favorable-over-unfavorable gap in public opinion is 19%, the largest it's been since enactment.