Inspired in part by DSeid’s thread on what Republicans will do if Biden wins. Let’s take a similar hypothetical. Biden wins this fall. Democrats end up having a really good night and win the senate as well, with a 52/48 split (it’s a hypothetical so this could happen:)).
The last two times this situation happened was with Clinton and Obama in 1992 and 2008. They were both weakened, at least in my opinion, due to controversy surrounding healthcare reform in the first two years of their administrations. How can Biden avoid the fate that Bill Clinton experienced in 1994 and Barrack Obama experienced in 2010?
Coronavirus is only going to get worse. The SCOTUS is again taking up Obamacare. For the foreseeable future it seems that healthcare reform is again likely to be a huge topic. I doubt that Biden would be able to get away with a “let’s focus on something else and save healthcare for later” approach. The question then becomes how should a Biden administration approach this issue to avoid a repeat of 1994 and 2010? Let’s give the future Biden administration our best advice. Any and all recommendations welcome.
First, do no harm: Re-establish and mandate funding and support of ACA, nationwide. Then, address drug price gouging and demystify medical costs. Then, expand Medicare providing a public option.
Probably not much. But in this hypothetical he has that majority :). At least until the 2022 elections. The goal is for Biden to deal with healthcare in such a way so that he avoids the same fate that Clinton and Obama experienced in 1994 and 2010.
What I hope he does in that scenario is figure out how to get the Republicans on board with it, or when the pendulum swings the other way, they will just erase it again. I don’t see how you get to set it in stone somehow without a willing congress and executive. That’s where I am lost I guess.
I figured if you could put “Trumpcare” on it or something that they would want to own, it would have a chance of not getting shot in the foot by antagonistic governors and stuff like the ACA was.
No, I think that’s the worst possible strategy. Clinton and Obama tried to work with the Republicans but the Republicans don’t want a public healthcare system to work. They’re getting money from the private healthcare system and they want to protect that system. So if we let them help work on a public healthcare system, all they will do is use that as an opportunity to sabotage it from within.
The Democrats need to get a good solid public healthcare system up and running in the face of Republican opposition. If we can get it going and protect it long enough, the public will see that it works and it will become too politically costly for the Republicans to destroy it. Instead, they’ll begin claiming it was always their idea and they deserve the credit.
The reason GOP governors could wreck the Medicaid expansion is that it was 10% funded by the states, and after the Supreme Court ruled that the Federal Govt. couldn’t compel the states to spend money, they had the option to reject it. As long as everything is federally funded in Bidencare, this particular issue won’t happen.
Of course the GOP is going to try to find some way to sabotage any UHC bill. Other than trying to prevent any legal issues like compelled state spending, the most important thing is for Biden to find a way to put out a popular policy so that they GOP will have a tough time selling repeal to the public, and if they do manage to repeal it will be forced to own the consequences.
There were a lot of reasons the GOP’s repeal efforts failed after they took both branches in 2016, but a huge one was that they were going to lose a ton of voters who were going to see their healthcare costs go up or lose access to healthcare under any of the proposed Republican plans.
Pretty much how I feel. One thing. To avoid SCOTUS’s plan to kill it requires reinstating the tax on people with no insurance. And that will be part of undoing the Trump tax cut. But that was done using budget reconciliation and I assume it can be undone in the same way. Double win!