Timeline: the politics of US healthcare

Barack Obama's healthcare reforms were not the first - and may not be the last - attempt by an American president to extend medical coverage.

Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms could be undone in whole or in part by this morning's Supreme Court ruling.

The President’s re-election hopes may hang in the balance, but the opposition the law has faced puts Mr Obama in good company. Since the Second World War, nearly every American president has proposed to expand health coverage - most were sunk by conservative attacks.

1949 – As part of his "Fair Deal" reform proposals, President Harry Truman calls on Congress to create a "nation-wide system of health insurance." The American Medical Association denounces the idea as an "Old World scourge," and the bill is never put to vote in Congress.

1954 – President Dwight Eisenhower's "reinsurance" plan proposes that the federal government partially underwrite the losses of private insurers. Opponents denounce this plan, too, as a "first step on the road to socialized medicine," and the bill joins Truman's in Congressional purgatory.

1965 – Medicare and Medicaid, government-sponsored healthcare programs for the elderly and the poor, respectively, are passed by Congress after monumental effort by President Lyndon Johnson.

1974 – The "mandate" is born as Republican President Richard Nixon proposes a combination of employer-provided and federally-subsidised private insurance. Democrats favor a single-payer system, and Nixon's presidency is ruined by Watergate before a compromise can be found.

1978 –President Jimmy Carter’s attempt to achieve “comprehensive” healthcare coverage fails before it even starts. Infighting among Democrats kills the effort before the details of the plan are released to Congress and the public.

1993 – Lack of consensus among Democrats and conservative opposition doom President Bill Clinton’s proposal for universal healthcare coverage. The plan, overseen by First Lady Hillary Clinton, would have mandated employer-purchased care and heavy regulation of insurance providers. Congressional Republicans propose the individual mandate as an alternative.

2003 – President George W Bush secures a massive expansion of Medicare to provide the elderly with benefits for prescription drugs. A similar plan had been controversially passed under President Ronald Reagan, but repealed a year later.

2010 – “Obamacare” passes Congress after more than a year of vehement debate. The individual mandate and many consumer protection provisions are included, but a government-run “public option” is dropped from the bill. Florida and other states file legal challenges to the mandate mere hours after the bill’s passage.

Source: Telegraph