Margot Sanger-Katz

If you think about the kinds of jobs that low-income people have, they're just much less likely to come with health insurance.

You know, if there's someone who has a bunch of gig economy jobs that they're patching together or a part-time job, those are the kinds of jobs generally don't have health insurance.

And so those people are really benefiting from the ability to go get a free plan somewhere else.

It's also like free is a really important horizon, it turns out.

Even asking people to pay a small amount can really discourage them and particularly low income people from enrolling in these kind of programs.

A lot of really low income people don't even have a bank account.

And so if you just imagine the mechanics of like, how is that person going to pay a monthly premium?

They can't write a check.

They don't have a credit card.

Not impossible, but makes it harder.

Well, I think it's important to remember Republicans never liked Obamacare.

They felt like it was a waste of money.

They thought it was putting too many rules on the health insurance system.

And this was a huge expansion.

It's a lot more dollars.

It was bringing more people into the system.

And I think they also objected to some of the specific policy changes.

They really didn't like the idea that all these people were going to get insurance for free.

It felt sort of unfair to them.

Everyone else has to pay something for health insurance.