The fight over passing the Affordable Care Act was never just about expanding access health insurance. In “Whiplash: From the Battle for Obamacare to the War on Science,” David Blumenthal and James A. Morone argue that the bruising political war over Obamacare opened the door to an even more dangerous conflict that eventually led to eroding public trust in science during a once-in-a-century pandemic.
The new book traces a turbulent decade in American politics through the presidential administrations of Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, arguing that each president was forced to navigate a health care system that had long defied reform. For nearly a century, Democratic presidents, and many Republicans, entered office promising to remake American health care.
Obama, the authors write, finally broke through with the Affordable Care Act, ending the century-long push for sweeping reform.
But that achievement came at a political cost. Blumenthal and Morone argue that Obamacare ignited a fierce culture war that spilled into the Trump years and exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic. Health care, once debated largely in terms of coverage and cost, became tied to deeper questions about government authority, expertise and public trust.
The authors present Trump as a contradictory figure in that crisis. They argue that he denied and delayed in the face of the gravest public health emergency in a century. At the same time, they credit his administration with helping produce a major scientific achievement through Operation Warp Speed, which accelerated vaccine development at historic speed.
They also argue that Trump and Biden, responding to the pandemic’s economic devastation, oversaw one of the nation’s most significant anti-poverty efforts in decades. Yet the larger legacy, they contend, was the emergence of a new political battle — not simply over coverage or spending, but over science itself.
Guests:
David Blumenthal is a professor of the practice of public health and health policy at Harvard University.
James A. Morone is the John Hazen White Professor Emeritus of political science at Brown University.
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This interview will be recorded live Wednesday, March 25, 2026, at 12:00 p.m.
