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 p...