Obamacare Was Indeed Bipartisan Legislation: New York Times Op-Ed

In Tuesday's edition of the New York Times, David Leonhardt has an op-ed column taking to task Republicans for their hypocritical bashing of Obamacare in the lead-up to the proposal of their own health care bill, currently the subject of much criticism from Democrats and a significant number of Republicans as well.

No Republicans, Leonhardt concedes, voted for Obamacare. But GOP members' lament that I wish Obama had done health reform in a bipartisan way, rather than jamming through a partisan bill is, he says, "false," and "demonstrably so."

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Leonhardt writes that Republican opposition to "Democratic attempts to cover the uninsured stretch back almost a century." So the Democrats slowly inched their proposals to the right, in hopes of gaining bipartisan support for health care reform that could actually pass. But, he opines, the Republicans, in turn, moved even farther to the right on the issue. Eventually, when Obamacare was passed, despite GOP opposition, it was indeed a bipartisan piece of legislation, writes Leonhardt, adding, "It accomplishes a liberal end through conservative means and is much closer to the plan conservatives favored a few decades ago than the one liberals did."

Read David Leonhardt's entire op-ed in today's Times, The Original Lie About Obamacare, here.

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Photo: President Barack Obama on June 28, 2012, talks on the phone with Solicitor General Donald Verrilli in the Oval Office after learning that the Affordable Care Act was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. Credit: Pete Souza/The White House Via Getty Images)