Biden’s embrace of ACA risky
Position exposes candidate to attacks from right, left, center
Joe Biden had just rolled out his health care plan when he made what could be a fateful pledge to a crowd in Iowa: “If you like your health care plan or your employer-based plan, you can keep it.”
The remark echoed assurances President Barack Obama made repeatedly as he sold the Affordable Care Act, which became known as “Obamacare.” But Obama’s promise proved an exaggeration, if not a falsehood, and it anchored early GOP attacks on the law as new regulations led private insurers to cancel certain policies, even if they had to offer replacements to consumers.
Biden’s promise on job-based coverage, which almost 160 million Americans use, underscores the risks of positioning himself as the health overhaul’s chief defender. Fully embracing the health law and pledging to expand it also means exposing Biden to attacks from all sides: from the left that wants more than what Biden is offering; from the right that loathes the law in any form; and from the middle, where voters remain skeptical about the nation’s complex and expensive health care system.
“This is one of those issues where the pendulum has swung back and forth since ‘Obamacare’ passed,” Democratic pollster Paul Maslin said, pointing to health care’s role in Republican victories in 2010 and Democratic wins last November. “Right now we have the advantage,” Maslin said, “but I’d be a fool to say there’s no risk here.”
Indeed, the Republican National Committee has seized on Biden’s policy rollout. “Biden has to deal with the fact that he would be the 2020 face of Barack Obama’s notorious lie that if you like your health care plan you can keep it,” said Steve Guest of the Republican National Committee.
Biden is at the center of a broader Democratic divide over the future of health care that will likely be an animating issue at this week’s primary debates in Detroit.
The former vice president is proposing to add a “public option” that would allow Americans to choose whether to buy government insurance or buy private policies. He also would boost existing subsidies that consumers use to buy policies on the law’s exchanges.
That would mark a significant expansion but still be a more incremental approach than Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All” proposal, which would essentially replace the private market with government insurance.
Biden’s campaign says his position reflects voters’ slow embrace of the 2010 law, while acknowledging voters’ concerns about the cost and consequences of a single-payer, government health insurance system and their distrust of private insurers and the pharmaceutical industry.