News Journal:Health care will be the major issue in November election. This time that favors Democrats

Health care was the dominant issue in the last two midterm elections. According to all the polls, it is going to be the major issue again in November, but with a very significant twist.
In 2010, Republicans won back control of the House of Representatives with a massive campaign against the just-passed Affordable Care Act. That was the year they dubbed the new law “Obamacare.” They railed against the federal government’s intrusion into health care.
In 2014 the poor rollout of the federal health care website added to the confusion about Obamacare, and Republicans gained control of both the House and the Senate. Polling back then consistently showed that Obamacare was unpopular with a majority of voters, but individual parts of it had wide support.
When Republicans took control of the White House as well as both houses of Congress in 2016, the conventional wisdom was that Obamacare would be repealed and replaced with something President Trump had repeatedly promised during his campaign would be “better and cheaper.” That did not happen.
Instead, the Trump administration has chipped away at many provisions of the law. Premiums have risen dramatically, and as they have more people seem to realize what they may lose if Obamacare disappears.
A recent Huffington Post/You Gov poll found that health care is once again the number one issue for voters in 2018. But you’ll see a new twist in the upcoming campaigns. This year, it will be Democrats who want to talk about health care and put Republicans on the defensive.
The HuffPost poll concluded that “for the first election cycle since its passage, a majority of the public now approves of President Obama’s signature health care law, and Democrats enjoy a sizable advantage over the GOP on handling related issues.”
In a letter he recently wrote to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer laid out the Democratic position you’ll hear throughout the campaign this fall: “After 18 months of trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and deliberately sabotaging our health care system, Republican policies have resulted in major premium increases for millions of Americans … Americans are ready for the President and Congressional Republicans to stop making the problem worse and instead work in a bipartisan manner to improve our country’s health care system.”
When Health and Human Services Secretary Alex M. Azar II testified before a Senate committee recently, the senators questioned him on the two big health care issues. First, they asked about the recent decision by the Department of Justice to jeopardize the Obamacare guarantee that health care insurers had to provide coverage for patients with pre-existing conditions and not charge more for it.
Protection for those with pre-existing conditions has been one of the most popular provisions of Obamacare. President Trump and congressional Republicans have promised time and again to protect it.
It is essential to many Americans.
Kaiser Medical reports that “27 percent of adults under 65 in the individual market have a pre-existing medical condition that could preclude them from coverage if the Affordable Care Act — or its community rating provision — is repealed.”
Senators then questioned Secretary Azar on President Trump’s promise on May 30 that drug companies, because of the administration’s drug-pricing blueprint, would be announcing voluntary massive drops in prices within two weeks.
That has not happened, and there are indications that the major drug plans are reluctant to cut prices.
Secretary Azar’s response was that some pharmaceutical companies wanted to cut prices, but were not because of competitive reasons.
“This is like some kind of sick joke,” Senator Maggie Hassan (D-NH) said.
There are some very clear indications that Americans are finally getting tired of both sick jokes and a dysfunctional health care system that was only incrementally improved by Obamacare. In fact, a recent MorningConsult/Politico poll determined that 63 percent of all voters strongly support or somewhat support a “Medicare for all” health care system.
Support among Democrats is much higher than that, and you will see many Democratic candidates running on that platform in the upcoming campaign.
They will have a lot of convincing arguments on their side, including what such a single-payer system would do to lower health care costs. Currently, those costs amount to 17 percent of Gross Domestic Product in the United States, compared to 10 percent in Canada.
Whatever happens in the health care debates this fall, it is beginning to look like the days when Republicans could win by simply calling government programs “socialized medicine” may be over.

Ted Kaufman is a former U.S. senator from Delaware.

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