The Republican’s LOST that one BIG TIME….
Their hopes for mounting a repeal drowned out by a majority of Americans expressing their support for the healthc are program…
The ‘socialist’ programs of Social Security , Medicare and Medicaid have another one added to the list….
President Obama’s (and Biden’s) Affortable HealthCare Act….
The government benefits began their existence as objects of partisan rancor and harsh criticism. Eventually, though, they became so popular that politicians of both parties promised to protect them.
It was true of Social Security and Medicare. And now the pattern seems to be repeating itself with Obamacare.
Consider what has happened recently in North Carolina: Only a decade after the state’s Republican politicians described the law as dangerous and refused to sign up for its expansion of Medicaid, Republicans and Democrats came together to pass such an expansion. The Republican-controlled House in North Carolina passed the bill 87 to 24, while the Republican-controlled Senate passed it 44 to 2.
“Wow, have things changed,” Jonathan Cohn wrote in a HuffPost piece explaining how the turnabout happened.
Obamacare — the country’s largest expansion of health insurance since Medicare and Medicaid in 1965 — is still not as widely accepted as those programs. North Carolina became the 40th state to agree to expand Medicaid under Obamacare, which means that 10 states still have not, including two of the largest, Texas and Florida. In those states, more than 3.5 million adults lack health insurance as a result.
But the list of states signing up for the program seems to be moving in only one direction: It keeps growing.
Humiliation’
In its growing acceptance, Obamacare resembles other major parts of the federal safety net:
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When Congress was considering Social Security in 1935, conservatives and many business executives bitterly criticized it. One Texas newspaper described Social Security as “a huge sales tax on everybody on behalf of the oldsters.” A Wall Street Journal editorial predicted that the law would eventually be reason for Congress to look back in “humiliation.” Not exactly: Social Security is so popular that it is known as a third rail in American politics.
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When Congress was debating Medicare in the 1960s, Ronald Reagan — then an actor with a rising political profile — attacked the program as a step toward socialism. If it passed, Reagan warned, “We are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.” As president, Reagan praised and supported the program.
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After Congress created Medicaid — a health-insurance program primarily for low-income households — in 1965, some states did not initially join it. Arizona became the last to do so, in 1982….
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Note:
The number of people signing up for insurance through Obamacare has surged over the past two years, partly because of a new subsidies signed by President Biden.