Pragmatic Vision: Obama and the Enactment of the Affordable Care Act

On March 23, 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law, providing every American with the opportunity to have guaranteed health care coverage. The Affordable Care Act—frequently referred to as Obamacare—is almost synonymous with Obama's presidential legacy and reflects a series of key decisions that he made beginning before he took office. As Meena Bose shows, it was Obama's particular brand of pragmatic politics that ultimately shaped the passage of the Affordable Care Act and made a lasting mark on health care reform in the United States. Pragmatic Vision examines eight of Obama's decisions that resulted in the landmark enactment of health care reform, starting with his commitment to health care reform in the 2008 presidential campaign and concluding with his decision to allow for flexibility with its implementation, following technical hurdles and Supreme Court rulings. Bose shows that Obama's...