Former President Barack Obama stepped into the political spotlight again on Monday, wading into the fray regarding the budget reconciliation bill passed by House Republicans that is now being considered in the Senate.
“Here’s something everybody should be paying attention to: Congressional Republicans are trying to weaken the Affordable Care Act and put millions of people at risk of losing their health care. Call your Senators and tell them we can’t let that happen,” Obama said in a post on X, with a link to a Washington Post article.
The former president, known for his acute political instincts, may have found the secret weapon for Democrats in the messaging war on the reconciliation bill. While Republicans have long railed against government expansion into Americans’ health care, accompanied with burdensome regulations and inefficiencies, the bill has had remarkable staying power since it was pushed through Congress in 2009. A 2024 Gallup poll found that 19% of self-described Republicans supported the law, a record high since the polling began in 2012, and an increase of eight points from 2021.
The article Obama links to in his post details how Republican cuts passed in the House version of the reconciliation bill would remove a total of 10.7 million Americans from Obamacare’s insurance marketplaces and Medicaid. Specifically, 7.6 million fewer people would be enrolled in Medicaid, and 3.1 million fewer would be in the insurance marketplaces.
The House bill also ends a Biden administration policy that allowed illegal aliens who are members of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) to be eligible to purchase exchange plans.
“They’re not calling this ACA repeal and replace, but the coverage losses would be among many of the same people who would have lost their insurance under ACA repeal,” Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, a nongovernmental organization focused on health policy, told the Post.
Such a development would go a long way in fulfilling President Donald Trump’s 2016 promise to repeal and replace Obamacare. Those efforts failed in 2017 due to opposition from then-Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who joined with moderate Republicans Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska in blocking a “skinny repeal” of the Affordable Health Care Act.
Obama has had a rocky relationship with his successor since at least 2011 when the then-president mocked Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner after the New York billionaire questioned where Obama was born. Some speculate that the dinner solidified Trump’s desire to run for office, a notion the president has denied. The two men appeared to have buried the hatchet at least publicly in recent months, when they were seen smiling and laughing together at former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral in January.