A March 14 Washington Post article comparing the Republican-led health reform effort to the legislative process that resulted in Obamacare cited law librarian and adjunct Professor John Cannan’s scholarship.

The article challenged claims by White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney that this year’s legislative process has been more transparent than the one that preceded enactment of the Affordable Care Act in 2010.

To reconstruct the history, the Post article cited past news coverage and transcripts and “relied on a detailed account of the legislative maneuvering” that led to Obamacare” by Cannan, a research librarian at the Kline School of Law wrote in 2013.   

The article quoted Cannan’s 2013 Law Library Journal article that noted the “ad hoc” process that resulted in the Affordable Care Act is “an illustrative example of modern lawmaking, especially for major initiatives.”  

The U.S. Supreme Court also cited Cannan’s article, “A Legislative History of the Affordable Care Act: How Legislative Procedure Shapes Legislative History” in its 2015 ruling on Obamacare, which allowed for federal  subsidies in states that did not set up their own health care exchanges.

Cannan teaches Intellectual Property Legal Research.