What would Clinton do with Obamacare?

That doesn’t mean she’d be able to make any huge additions or revisions to Obamacare. A GOP-led Congress would likely block any efforts to expand its scope, and the law’s main components, including the new insurance marketplaces, are mandated within the law itself.

But Clinton would have the power to steer smaller elements of the law, like changing the latitude states get when expanding Medicaid or placing a higher priority on experiments with new payment models that reward doctors for delivering better care.

“Expect to see her put some of her Hillary brand ideas on the Affordable Care Act,” said Kavita Patel, a former White House policy director under Obama and health care expert at the Brookings Institution.

The health care law continues to sharply divide Americans and Washington, and the Supreme Court’s upcoming King v. Burwell ruling on its insurance subsidies could put the law in turbulent waters if the justices block them in a majority of the states.

Clinton has consistently praised the law, while at times acknowledging some of its flaws, and even encouraged her fellow Democrats to run on the law last year despite its relative unpopularity.

“The Affordable Care Act will liberate people,” Clinton said at UCLA in March 2014. “You will not have to keep a job that you don’t want because of a pre-existing condition…You will now have more opportunities to take care of yourself and your family.”

A few things could work in Clinton’s favor if she became president. The health care law that has bitterly divided the country for half a decade is nicknamed after Obama, not her. Its supporters hope that Obama’s departure from office will help dispel some of the public dislike.

And Clinton’s keen, longtime interest in health policy makes liberals more confident she can propel forward reforms that are still sorely needed.

“I think Hillary’s election in and of itself would be a clear signal that the focus on obstruction, repealing, undermining really needs to come to an end and would come to an end,” said Ron Pollack, president of Families USA and also a former Bill Clinton appointee to an advisory commission on health care consumer protections.

But it’s precisely her past health reform attempts that could make conservatives extra wary of any moves she makes in the future. They’re likely to view whatever she tries to do with suspicion, especially if it involves a health care law they already dislike.

Its most unpopular part — the individual mandate to buy health coverage—is blamed on Obama, but it was Clinton who championed that proposal during her 2008 race against him. At the time, Obama was hesitant about including a mandate in a potential health reform bill.

Clinton’s 1993 plan would have differed from Obamacare in a big way, namely, how it would extend coverage to those without employer-sponsored insurance. While the Affordable Care Act sends most to state-based exchanges where subsidized plans are available, the Clinton plan would have required all employers to provide coverage through new, regionally-based health insurance cooperatives.

Yet there’s also much overlap between the two. Like Obamacare, Clinton’s plan would also have required individuals to buy coverage, banned insurers from denying coverage to the sick and required health plans to cover certain benefits.

Bob Moffitt, a longtime health policy analyst for the Heritage Foundation, recalls that he spent “five days locked up in a room” reading the Clinton health plan when it was released in November 1993.

“In my view, there’s no daylight between Hillary Clinton’s view of health care based on what she produced and what Obama produced,” Moffitt said. “It’s basically the same plan.”

Former Rep. Henry Waxman, who retired last year, said he doesn’t think memories of the Clinton health plan will necessarily hurt or help her.

“I don’t think too many people remember that she had a proposal for health care reform or anything specifically about it,” said the California Democrat, who led a health care subcommittee in Congress at the time.

“I think they’ll look back and see that Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter and presidents going all the way back to Teddy Roosevelt were not able to pass it and she and her husband weren’t able to pass it either,” he said.

If Clinton runs for president — and she still hasn’t formally announced she will — much of the focus will be on her foreign policy record as secretary of state under Obama. But other past roles offer some hints about how she might approach health care in the post-Obamacare era, Patel said.

As first lady, she showed interest in health technology and as a senator she pushed for modernizing the way medical records are kept, at one point appearing with former political foe Newt Gingrich to tout an electronic medical records bill.

Patel also thinks she might offer even more flexibility to states choosing to expand their Medicaid programs under Obamacare, as a result of the perspective gained from her days as first lady of Arkansas and then in the White House. The Department of Health and Human Services has given five states permission to organize Medicaid expansion in alternative ways.

“I think the Clinton administration had a lot of emphasis on working with states,” Patel said. “I could see a Hillary administration doing the same.”

Clinton could also expand Obamacare’s experiments with basing Medicare payments on quality, not quantity, one health reform effort with bipartisan appeal. The Obama administration recently focused efforts toward that end and a bill reforming a troubled Medicare payment formula is currently moving through Congress.

But before any of that could happen, she has to win in 2016, assuming she runs. And conservatives are much more consumed with preventing that than with worrying about how she might push for changes to Obamacare they might not like.

“If you vote for Hillary, you’re voting for Obamacare,” said Bob Moffitt. “You can make a very good case Obamacare is the Clinton health plan.”