Obamacare vs. Trumpcare

Submission 45,602

Part of a series on Obamacare. [View Related Entries]

About

Obamacare vs. GOP Replacement, also known as Obamacare vs. Trumpcare, is a joke format that became popular on Twitter in March of 2017,^[1] following the Republican Party's release of a draft of a bill meant to replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA), colloquially known as "Obamacare." The meme was popular among opponents of the Republicans, and involves juxtaposing two similar images corresponding to "Obamacare" and "Trumpcare" (i.e. the replacement bill), the "Obamacare" image being generally better than the latter.

Origin

On March 6th, 2017, House Republicans unveiled their plan for repealing the Affordable Care Act. Early commentary on the draft bill focused on the extent to which it diminishes or weakens the coverage provided by the ACA. Following the release of the draft, four Republican senators announced that they would not support the bill as they feared it would deprive their constituents of healthcare, saying in a joint statement that "we will not support a plan that does not include stability for Medicaid expansion populations or flexibility for states."^[2] Senate Democrats have uniformly opposed the bill.

Shortly after the bill was announced, various Twitter users began mocking the proposal by tweeting two similar pictures next to each other, representing Obamacare as the better alternative to the "GOP Replacement." The first appears to have been tweeted by @morninggloria,^[8] using the before-and-after pictures of Potato Jesus.

The format is similar to You vs. The Guy She Told You Not To Worry About, another popular Twitter joke centered on comparing two images.

Spread

The jokes were an instant hit on Twitter, as hundreds of users posted variations over the course of the daily. A Twitter Moment^[3] was compiled that afternoon featuring tweets from @jackiecarbajal (below, left), @HamaMichels (below, center), and @XGroverX (below, right).

In the coming days, articles about the meme were published on several news sites, including Elite Daily,^[4] Mashable,^[5] Harpers Bazaar,^[6] Buzzfeed,^[7] and more.

Bill Comparisons

At a March 7th, 2017 White House press conference discussing the bill, Republicans placed their proposed health care bill next to a copy of the Affordable Care Act in an effort to demonstrate how much simpler theirs was compared to the ACA. To many, the moment was a literalization of the "Obamacare vs. GOP replacement" meme which had been circulating that day, leading to its inclusion into the jokes, and a Twitter Moment.^[9]

iPhone vs. Health Care

On March 7th, Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz gave an interview to CNN in which he said "Americans have choices. And they’ve got to make a choice. So maybe rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and they want to go spend hundreds of dollars on that, maybe they should invest in their own health care. They’ve got to make those decisions themselves.”^[10] This comment angered many because of the insinuation that lower-income people should have to choose between an iPhone and health care, when health care is over 15x as expensive as an iPhone, as Twitter users soon pointed out.

This led to a series of jokes on Twitter centered around iPhone vs. Health Care price comparisons. Buzzfeed^[11] covered the jokes on the 8th.