Streetwise: The Death Gap
By: Suzanne Hanney
June 15, 2017
When David A. Ansell, M.D. co-hosted a fundraiser for Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate campaign in 2003, he asked the future president about national health care reform. Obama gave Ansell the outline of the future Affordable Care Act (ACA).
Obama favored a single-payer system, but said “it will never get passed in the United States.” Health insurance companies held so much political power – 250,000 employees across the U.S. and a huge lobbying apparatus — that opposing them would be political suicide.