Party Breakdown

Of the 435 House seats, there are 186 districts with direct-purchase proportions above the national average of roughly 5 percent, according to census data. Of those, Democrats hold 67, or 36 percent.

The proportion of residents who purchase their insurance on the individual market varies widely across all congressional districts. Democratic Representative Henry Waxman’s Los Angeles-area seat leads the nation, with almost 17 percent of residents getting their insurance that way, the census data show. At the opposite end is a Houston-area district represented by Democratic Representative Gene Green, where just 1.4 percent of residents purchase their insurance on the individual market.

Waxman’s district is dominated by entertainment industry workers, including self-employed actors, writers and craftsmen, as well as technology companies including DirecTV, the largest U.S. satellite-TV operator. Green’s is more than three-quarters Hispanic and heavily Democratic, like Waxman’s.

‘Dysfunctional’ Market

Drew Altman, CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a Menlo Park, California-based nonprofit that studies health care, called the individual market before Obamacare “totally dysfunctional” because of sudden price increases and policies that often lacked depth.

“As we move beyond the cancellation story, the bigger question is what is the mix of winners and losers in the individual market,” he said. “When you have an even small number of losers, they make headlines.”

Another resident of Peters’s district, Edie Littlefield Sundby, became the subject of national news coverage after she wrote an opinion piece for the Nov. 4 edition of the Wall Street Journal about the cancellation of her coverage amid an almost seven-year battle with gallbladder cancer.

Republicans have seized on such stories and highlighted the contradiction of Obama’s pledge that people who liked their existing coverage would be able keep it.

Niles, who lives in the coastal community of La Jolla in Peters’s district, joined the California Farm Bureau Federation around 2004 to gain access to a group plan, though his work has nothing to do with farming.