Direct And Unfiltered: John Dingell’s Popular Health Care Tweets

Former Rep. John Dingell, who died Thursday, was known for his strong opinions during his nearly 60 years in Congress. And even after leaving Congress, he continued to express his views through a lively, partisan — and sometimes earthy — Twitter account that attracted a keen following of more than 265,000 supporters and critics.

Although his posts dealt with a wide variety of issues, Dingell’s longtime devotion to improving health care was a frequent topic.

Here is a small sampling of his musings on health care. Click on the examples to see the full post and retweets.

From his many years championing health reform in Congress, Dingell could offer a unique historical perspective of the efforts to expand coverage, a quest he said would make “my pop” proud.

Who knew health care could be so complicated?

— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) March 21, 2017

Dingell took great pride in the passage of the Affordable Care Act. He acknowledged it wasn’t perfect. “The only perfect law was handed to Moses on stone tablets by God himself.”

Was Obamacare perfect? Hell no. The only perfect law was handed to Moses on stone tablets by God himself. Obamacare was an important start.

— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) March 22, 2017

He had no patience with Republican lawmakers’ efforts to repeal and replace the ACA.

House GOP had the better half of a decade to provide a viable alternative to the ACA. Instead, they scribbled some tax cuts on a bar napkin.

— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) March 7, 2017

And he didn’t take kindly to efforts by “knaves and know-nothings” in recent years to add work requirements to Medicaid programs.

Republicans love trying to tack work requirements onto basic services like nutrition assistance and now even Medicaid.

How about some work requirements for this White House staff? I want a daily report on what these knaves and know-nothings actually do each day. Trump included.

— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) August 14, 2018

He clearly enjoyed jousting with friends and foes on Twitter.

.@MEPFuller I passed Medicare and the Civil Rights Act. Surely someone else can get the blame for this place. cc: @anthonyweiner

— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) February 28, 2015

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.