The Affordable Care Act: How Nixon’s Health Reform Proposal Became Democrats’ Albatross

Abstract

President Obama’s signature health care reform, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), was passed in 2010 and fully implemented in 2014. Two years later, Republicans’ attacks on the ACA as a failed reform helped fuel their recent electoral victory. The legislation significantly expanded insurance coverage. But it was built on, and fortified, private health insurance firms, and it accelerated the corporate takeover of hospitals and physicians’ practices. This obeisance to corporate interests precluded making coverage universal or care affordable. As a result, the reform failed to address the grave health care problems faced by most working- and middle-class Americans and left many of them feeling betrayed by Democrats who oversold the ACA’s benefits.