The 2018 Midterms are all about Health Care

The Future of Obamacare is at stake in the Midterms 

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) was signed into law on March 2010. Not a systemic reform, it built on the current public/private healthcare system expanding public programs, filling in gaps in insurance coverage and strengthening the employer-based system. The main goal of this reform was to improve access to care by expanding coverage with tax-credits and cost-sharing subsidies, the individual mandate, the end of medical underwriting for preexisting conditions and the expansion of Medicaid coverage in voluntary States. Nowadays, 28 million persons are still uninsured, 20 million fewer than in 2010.

Despite all of President Trump's efforts to repeal and dismantle Obamacare (one of his main commitment during the 2016 presidential campaign), public opinion seems largely comfortable with the ACA. In January 2018, 50 % of all adults and 75 % of Democrats said they have a favorable opinion of it.

Republican candidates soften tones on Health Care

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, for example, who led the "Cruz Amendment" during the repeal debate in Senate last year (which permitted insurance companies to offer plans with none of the protections of the ACA), said last week he will protect pre-existing conditions.

Towards Universal Health coverage? More and more Democrats are calling for "Medicare-for-all"

Did the ACA go far enough? 84 % of Democrats and 70 % of Americans said they support "Medicare-for-all" to largely replace the current system. Medicare-for-all and single-payer health care, once a fringe opinion, are suddenly popular and the words appear in political advertisements and debates. Senator Bernie Sanders, inspired by the Canadian model, opened the debate in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Republicans are concerned enough that President Donald Trump published an op-ed on October 10th that portrayed Medicare-for-all as a threat to seniors and an evidence of Democrats’ tendency for open-border socialism.

But still, if Medicare-for-all appears to be a popular slogan, the term is very ambiguous and could be seen as a broad and convenient umbrella from a totally government-run system with no more private insurers to a system in which everyone has the option of buying into Medicare. Medicare-for-all is uniting Democrats for now — but it could divide them later.