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How former slaves got, and lost, universal health care

caption: Author Daniel Dawes.
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Author Daniel Dawes.
Brigitte Martin Mack

The Affordable Care Act will be seven years old this March if President-elect Trump and the Republican Congress haven't repealed it by then.

Daniel Dawes, director of health policy at the Morehouse School of Medicine, reveals in his new book, "150 Years of Obamacare," there was a program similar to Obamacare enacted just after the Civil War. It was designed to get health care to freed slaves.

It was largely dismantled just seven years later. In this interview with KUOW's Ross Reynolds, Dawes notes the parallels of what's happening today and what happened 150 years ago.

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