Obamacare

The passing of Obamacare ten years ago is a study in how politics works. The democrats had to get a majority vote in the house but they also had to overcome the filibuster in the senate which means 60 votes. At the start of the negotiations the democrats had 58 votes in the senate but after some delay the MN legislature approved Al Franken to get to 59. Then republican senator Alan Specter switched parties and voted democrat and was the 60th vote. Then Senator Kennedy died and in a special election republican Scott Brown was elected and he became the 41st vote against. The senate had previously passed a bill that was not satisfactory to everyone so they continued. When they found they were one vote short they reverted to the previous bill and sent it back to the house for approval and when the house approved then Obama signed it into law. The bill passed in 2010 but did not take effect until 2014. The reason is that it was promised that the cost would be kept under one trillion for the first ten years so the estimate was $940 billion but in reality, that was only for 6 years of insurance. Once passed the new cost was $1.8 trillion for 2012 -2022. Then by 2018 the cost was estimated to be $2.5 trillion, Keep this in mind when the government estimates the cost of any new benefit.