Why did Obamacare get passed by the Democrats despite being unpopular at first?

[Hardkill]

I get that Medicare For All won't ever be passed by the US Congress for the foreseeable future because there's not a broad enough support for it by the American constituents for a numbers of reasons and because of the massive amount of corporate lobbying by all of the healthcare insurance companies around the country who have always been totally against any kind of single-payer healthcare system.

So, how did the Democrats in Congress and Obama successfully pass Obamacare in 2010 even though the healthcare policy never became popular amongst the majority of American voters until sometime after 2017 when Obama was no longer president? Also, why weren't any of the healthcare lobbying groups or any of the special interest groups able to persuade enough Democrats in Congress to not support or vote for the Obamacare legislation?

Does the popularity of a certain policy actually matter all that much for getting it passed?

Edited May 13, 2022 by Hardkill

[Pure Imagination]

On 5/13/2022 at 6:31 PM, Hardkill said:

So, how did the Democrats in Congress and Obama successfully pass Obamacare in 2010 even though the healthcare policy never became popular amongst the majority of American voters until sometime after 2017 when Obama was no longer president?

In 2009-2010, Democrats had a supermajority in Congress. Some blue dog, conservative Democrats watered down ObamaCare to make it the individual mandate system, a Republican proposed plan. Even though they went though all that compromise, Dems passed the bill in Congress with no Republican votes anyway.

Health insurance groups ended up loving ObamacCare because it mandates that all citizens must purchase private health insurance. The insurance companies wouldn’t kill that bill in their right minds - it’s essentially forcing all Americans to purchase their products.

Republicans were unable to repeal ObamaCare in 2017 because by that point, the propaganda wore off, people realized they liked the individual provisions of ObamaCare, and Republicans didn’t have a real replacement that would make prices more affordable. When ObamaCare was passed, Obama knew that the bill would withstand the test of time because it did legitimately reduce prices for most people.

 

Edited May 16, 2022 by Pure Imagination