During his campaign, President Obama went throughout the country extolling the virtues of health care reform. A plumber had stood up and declared he could not possibly do business if he were forced to buy one of the packaged health insurance for small businesses that were then available.

The plumber, who was actually an unlicensed plumber, said that he had obtained funding to start his own plumbing business, but if he needed to buy health insurance for small businesses, he could not afford to go into business after all.

The Republicans latched on to the story of this plumber to argue against Obama’s proposals for universal health care coverage. As we now know it this argument did not get anywhere as Obama won, and by 2010, a health care reform bill was signed.

As things turned out, unless Joe the plumber planned to have 50 employees or more, he need not provide health insurance for his employees.