1993—U.S. Sen. John Chafee, R-Rhode Island, introduces the “Health Equity and Access Reform Act,” which includes a mandate, complete a non-compliance “penalty.” Supporters include Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Republican Kit Bond fromMissouri.
April 12, 2006—Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney signs “An Act Providing Access to Affordable, Quality, Accountable Health Care”—otherwise known as Romneycare—into law. This legislation, meant to expand coverage while reining in health care costs, also introduced the individual mandate and served as the template for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
Later that month—Newt Gingrich expresses support for theMassachusettslaw—and the individual mandate.
March 2007—Lobbyist Jeanne Schulte Scott coins the term “Obamacare.”
February 2009—Freshly inaugurated President Barack Obama tells a joint session of Congress he plans to begin work with lawmakers on a health care reform bill.
March 5, 2009—The president meets with lawmakers to formally begin work on the legislation.
Aug. 25, 2009—Longtime U.S. Sen.—and lifetime reform champion—Ted Kennedy passes away.
Nov. 7, 2009—The House of Representatives passes the “Affordable Health Care for America Act” on a 220–215 vote. It heads to the Senate.
Dec. 1, 2009—U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., took the Senate floor to declare , “What [is] this going to do for our seniors, I have a message for you—you're gonna die sooner.”
Dec. 23, 2009—After ignoring the original House bill, completely rewriting another bill meant for something else entirely, and hours of both public and private debate, the Senate votes to close debate on the bill, 60-39.
Dec. 24, 2009—The Senate then passes the bill by that same party-line vote.
March 9, 2010—Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., infamously intones, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”
March 21, 2010—House passes the Senate bill by a 219-212 vote.
March 22, 2010—House republicans introduce a bill to repeal the bill, which fails.
March 23, 2010—President Barack Obama signs PPACA into law. Just before the bill signing, Vice President Joe Biden can be heard telling the president, “This is a big [f-ing] deal.”
Jan. 26, 2011—HHS said it had to date granted a total of 733 waivers for 2011, covering 2.1 million people, or about 1 percent of the privately insured population.
January 2011—Newt Gingrich says, “The Center for Health Transformation is about to enter a report that the Secretary of Health and Human Services has 1,961 grants of power in the Obamacare bill. I mean, you talk about a centralized, health dictatorship.”
June 2011—The administration announced that all applications for new waivers and renewals of existing ones have to be filed by Sept. 22 of that year, and no new waivers would be approved after this date.
Aug. 18, 2011—Herman Cain tells a crowd inLexington,Ky., “If Obamacare had been fully implemented when I caught cancer, I'd be dead.”
October 2011—White House stop work on the Community Living Assistance Services and Support, or CLASS Act, provision of PPACA. This was basically a public LTCI program—and a pet project of the late Ted Kennedy.
March 26, 2012—The Obama Administration embraces the term “Obamacare.”
June 28, 2012—Led by Chief Justice John Roberts, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the law on a 5-4 ruling. While the forced Medicaid expansion is ruled unconstitutional, the justices did uphold the mandate, siding with the administration's contention that it represented a tax.
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