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Democrats used to run away from President Obama’s signature health care law. This year, defending Obamacare from Republican attempts to overturn it is central to the party’s efforts to take back Congress. Democratic candidates are running ads and campaigning on shoring up the Affordable Care Act, not just in reliably blue states, but in traditionally Republican strongholds. Though they might not use the word “Obamacare” itself, Democrats warn against GOP legislation and lawsuits that seek repeal or would block the law’s most popular elements.It’s a far cry from 2010, where fury over Obamacare fueled a Tea Party wave that cost Democrats the House and, four years later, the Senate as well. (Sullivan, 9/20)

For months, polls have shown that health care is a top issue for Democratic voters and candidates are leaning into that. A poll conducted in August by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, which has closely tracked how health care is playing into the 2018 campaign, found that 27 percent of registered voters said health care was the most important issue for candidates to talk about, trailing only corruption in Washington. In recent campaign cycles, Democrats were on defense on the issue, facing protests and criticism for enacting the 2010 health law as voters blamed them for all of their health care concerns, says Ian Russell, a congressional strategist at Beacon Media who previously worked for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. (McIntire, 9/24)

Democratic candidates are getting very personal on the campaign trail as they push to preserve Obamacare, frankly sharing tales of their own health struggles. ...Similar messages are coming from three Democratic senators running for reelection in states that President Donald Trump carried in 2016 — Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, who had a childhood illness, and Missouri’s Claire McCaskill and North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp, both of whom have had breast cancer. (Ollstein, 9/22)

The Justice Department told a federal court in June that it would no longer defend provisions in the Affordable Care Act that protect patients with pre-existing medical conditions. In a brief responding to a lawsuit filed by Texas and 19 other states, the Justice Department called the individual mandate — which requires most Americans to buy insurance or face financial penalties — unconstitutional. Government lawyers argued that protections for pre-existing conditions and other medical issues cannot be separated from the individual mandate, and should also be overturned. (Qiu, 9/21)

President Trump attacked the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) at a campaign rally on Friday in Missouri for his vote last year against repealing the Affordable Care Act. “We had it defeated, unfortunately we lost a certain vote, but we lost all the Democrat votes when you think,” he said. McCain's was the deciding vote against the GOP’s push to overhaul former President Obama's signature health-care plan. (Axelrod, 9/21)

A federal court ruled this month that a Montana insurer is entitled to federal compensation for subsidy payments under the Affordable Care Act that President Trump abruptly ended last October, a ruling that could reverberate through insurance markets and cost the government hundreds of millions of dollars. At issue are payments for so-called cost-sharing reductions, discounts that enhance the value of health insurance policies purchased from the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces by reducing deductibles, co-payments and other out-of-pocket costs for low-income consumers. President Trump ended the payments in October, one of a series of executive actions intended to undo President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement. (Pear, 9/22)