{"id":336018,"date":"2025-10-27T12:33:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T12:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/336018\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T12:33:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T12:33:12","slug":"is-mass-to-blame-for-the-fights-over-obamacare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/336018\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Mass. to blame for the fights over Obamacare?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Write to us at startingpoint@globe.com<\/a>. To subscribe, sign up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a word, here\u2019s why the federal government remains shut down after nearly a month: Obamacare. More than 15 years after it became law, fighting over the Affordable Care Act continues to define our politics.<\/p>\n

The shutdown is only the latest example. Since Obamacare passed, it has survived Republican repeal efforts, challenges at the Supreme Court, and criticisms that it didn\u2019t do enough to lower health care costs. That last issue is behind the shutdown, which began after Senate Democrats demanded that Congress extend subsidies that make health insurance purchased through Obamacare\u2019s marketplaces cheaper.<\/p>\n

And much of that drama is thanks to Massachusetts.<\/p>\n

Obamacare is named for a Democratic president, but it might not exist without a Republican. In 2006, then-Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney signed a bill establishing a state health insurance marketplace that let uninsured residents buy coverage. So-called Romneycare, which President Obama saw as an effective way to expand coverage, became Obamacare\u2019s blueprint.<\/p>\n

But Romneycare\u2019s design also prefigured a criticism that still dogs its successor: that despite expanding coverage, Obamacare didn\u2019t change the fact that Americans pay more for health care than anyone else<\/a>. So under President Biden, Democrats passed subsidies that knocked an average of $705 off the annual cost of insurance purchased through Obamacare\u2019s marketplaces. But Democrats could only muster enough support to fund the subsidies until the end of this year.<\/p>\n

That deadline helped set up the impasse that caused this month\u2019s shutdown. In exchange for funding the government, Democrats want a deal to extend the subsidies. Republicans, who have long opposed Obamacare, have so far refused.<\/p>\n

GOP opposition to Obamacare, which culminated in a failed effort to repeal it during President Trump\u2019s first term, may also trace to the Bay State. During the 2008 presidential election, Senator Ted Kennedy promised Obama his endorsement \u2014 if Obama made health care reform, a dream of Kennedy\u2019s, his top priority. Obama agreed<\/a>, and Kennedy and his aides later helped craft the bill.<\/p>\n

But Kennedy\u2019s health was failing. He spent much of 2009 away from the Senate getting treatment for brain cancer. Lawmakers of both parties later suggested that Obamacare might\u2019ve won some Republican support<\/a> had Kennedy, known for his bipartisan friendships, been well enough to lead the negotiations. Instead, the law passed the Senate without a single GOP vote.<\/p>\n

But even if you don\u2019t buy that Republicans would\u2019ve supported a Democratic president\u2019s top legislative priority, Massachusetts shaped the version of Obamacare we got in another way.<\/p>\n

Kennedy\u2019s death in August 2009 triggered a special election \u2014 won by Scott Brown, a Republican who explicitly campaigned against Obamacare. That cost Democrats their filibuster-proof Senate majority, forcing the House to swallow the less progressive version that had already cleared the Senate.<\/p>\n

\u201cLosing Kennedy\u2019s seat forced Democrats to settle for a bill that had even more compromises than they had hoped,\u201d Jonathan Cohn, a journalist who wrote a book about Obamacare, has told me<\/a>. Those compromises helped contribute to progressive dissatisfaction with the law. (A different New England senator, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, also refused to back a so-called public option, a government-run insurance plan that could\u2019ve become a forerunner to the Medicare for All system that many progressives favor.)<\/p>\n

Brown\u2019s win also empowered legal challenges to Obamacare. The hastily written law lacks a clause that protects it from being overturned entirely if parts of it are ruled unconstitutional. That omission is one reason why repeated Supreme Court challenges have kept the partisan fight over the law alive.<\/p>\n

Besides the subsidies, which will spike Obamacare\u2019s insurance premiums for 337,000 people in Massachusetts<\/a> and millions of other Americans if not extended, politics are also driving the ongoing shutdown. Despite its early struggles, the law has become popular<\/a> and Democrats see defending it as a winning issue<\/a>. Meanwhile, Trump and many Republicans claim to have a plan to replace it with something better, despite having never produced one.<\/p>\n

So no matter how the shutdown resolves, there may be even more fights over Obamacare. Thanks, Massachusetts.<\/p>\n

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