Obamacare

Why The 2012 Election May Be The GOP's Only Chance To Repeal Health Care Reform

Sahil Kapur | January 10, 2012, 5:23AM

President Barack Obama speaks on the economy in Shaker Heights, OH on January 4, 2012.

Before she dropped out of the GOP presidential race, Michele Bachmann waxed apocalyptic about how 2012 is the Republican Party's only chance to repeal the health reform law. "We cannot afford to have a candidate who fails to understand the complexity of Obamacare or the urgency of its repeal," the Minnesota congresswoman said in an often-repeated line. "Because, we have only have one chance for repeal, and that's 2012."

There's truth to this statement: if Republicans fail to capture the presidency this time around, repealing some or all of the law becomes far more difficult later, even if the GOP sweeps Congress in 2012 and wins the White House in 2016 with equal determination to squash it.

"The 2012 election will be the most important in the history of our health care system because it will determine whether the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is implemented or repealed," wrote Harvard health policy expert David Blumenthal in the New England Journal of Medicine. "The consequences for Americans and their health care will be huge."

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