Obama Health Care

In the original House bill in 2009, the Affordable Care Act would have required individuals to buy private insurance, but would also have offered a public option in the health insurance exchanges and mandated employers to provide health insurance. Premiums for the public opinion would have varied by region (Chaikind et al. 2009). Both the public option and the employer mandates were removed from the Senate version of the bill and do not exist in Public Law 11-148 that President Obama signed in March 2010. This was a very grave disappointment to liberal and progressive reformers, who had always hoped for a Medicare-for-all plan of national health insurance, but ended up only with mandates to by private health insurance on the exchanges. In both the House and Senate versions of the bill, Medicaid coverage was extended to 150% of the poverty line and Medicare eligibility lowered to...
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