Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

Michael Levy was political science editor (2000-06), executive editor (2006-11), editor of Britannica Blog (2010-11), and director of product content & curriculum (2011-12) at Encyclopaedia Britannica. He subsequently became director of content for Elevate, a brain-training app for mobile devices.

Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors.

• Introduction
• Prelude to reform
• Initial passage in the House and Senate
• Final passage
• Provisions

Table Of Contents

U.S. Pres. Barack Obama (seated, centre) signing into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, 2010.

Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), in the United States, health care reform legislation signed into law by U.S. Pres. Barack Obama in March 2010, which included provisions that required most individuals to secure health insurance or pay fines, made coverage easier and less costly to obtain, cracked down on abusive insurance practices, and attempted to rein in the rising costs of health care. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), also called the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or “Obamacare,” was widely considered the most far-reaching health care reform act since the passage of Medicare, the U.S. government program guaranteeing health insurance for the elderly, in 1965.

Prelude to reform

A centrepiece of Obama’s campaign for the presidency was reform of the U.S. health care system—one that left some 45 million people uninsured. In February 2009, just one month after his inauguration, Obama addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress, imploring them that the time was right for overhauling health care:

[W]e must also address the crushing cost of health care. This is a cost that now causes a bankruptcy in America every thirty seconds. By the end of the year, it could cause 1.5 million Americans to lose their homes. In the last eight years, premiums have grown four times faster than wages. And in each of these years, one million more Americans have lost their health insurance. It is one of the major reasons why small businesses close their doors and corporations ship jobs overseas. And it’s one of the largest and fastest-growing parts of our budget.

In June details began to emerge, with Obama favouring a so-called “ public option,” a government insurance program that would compete with private businesses. The pharmaceutical industry, which had helped to scuttle Pres. Bill Clinton’s health care reform attempt in 1993–94, said that it would support reform. In August, as members of Congress went home to their districts and held town hall meetings, strident opposition to the efforts began to emerge. Decrying the reform as “socialized medicine” and “Obamacare” (a term that Obama himself later embraced), protestors heckled supporters of health care reform—mostly directing their anger at Democrats, particularly Arlen Specter, a Republican-turned-Democrat supporter of the legislation, whose town hall meeting on August 11 with more than 1,000 people almost erupted into physical violence. Among the grievances cited by opponents was that the bill would amount to a government takeover of the health care industry and, falsely, result in the alleged creation of “death panels” that would withhold care of critically ill people.

Initial passage in the House and Senate

On September 9 Obama went before another joint session of Congress to outline his reform measures, discussing the stakes and arguing that it should be a bipartisan effort:

I am not the first president to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last. It has now been nearly a century since Theodore Roosevelt first called for health care reform. And ever since, nearly every President and Congress, whether Democrat or Republican, has attempted to meet this challenge in some way.

Legislation was soon introduced, and it became clear that the Democrats in the House of Representatives favoured more sweeping reform than those in the Senate. Although the Democrats had, in theory, a filibuster-proof majority (60 votes) in the Senate, aided by independents Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Lieberman’s vote for a public option as well as the votes of conservative Democratic senators could not be assured. Thus, Senate majority leader Harry Reid attempted to craft a bill that could gain the support of his caucus as well as some moderate Republican senators, such as Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine.

On November 7 the House of Representatives passed its version of the health care bill, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, by a slim margin of 220–215. Thirty-nine Democrats voted against the legislation, and one Republican, Anh (“Joseph”) Cao of Louisiana, backed the measure. Aiding passage was a compromise on abortion language, because some conservative pro-life Democrats, including Bart Stupak of Michigan, threatened to withhold support unless language were added restricting coverage of abortion in any health insurance plan that received federal subsidies.

The Senate then proceeded with its debate on health care, with the hope of passing legislation before Christmas. The public option, included in the House version, was jettisoned in early December, as it became clear that such a provision would not pass the Senate. Abortion once again threatened to derail the process. An amendment similar to Stupak’s in the House, proposed by Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson and Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, was voted down in the Senate 54–45, and it was unclear if Nelson would support passage without the amendment or without tougher language on abortion. Nevertheless, on December 24, with all Democrats uniting, the Senate passed its version of the legislation 60–39, which would provide health care to more than 30 million uninsured Americans.