In just one year, Trump-era Republicans have managed to do what former President Barack Obama couldn’t accomplish in two full terms: make Obamacare popular.
Following the collapse of the Republican effort to repeal and replace the national healthcare law, favorable views of Obamacare have shot up — reaching 54 percent in February. That is the highest level ever recorded by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which has polled this issue nearly every month for almost eight years.
Though 54 percent may not be runaway support for a government program (Medicare and Social Security, for instance, poll much higher), it is amazing in context. Dating back to the first Kaiser poll in April 2010, just after Obama signed it into law, the program never had a favorable rating of over 50 and has instead consistently polled in the 30s to low 40s.
When Trump was elected in November 2016, Obamacare’s favorability stood at 43 percent. But that rating began to grow as Trump took office and Republicans stumbled on healthcare month after month. By last October, after the last attempt at repeal and replace went up in smoke, Obamacare had reached majority support, and it has polled at least at 50 percent ever since, before achieving its record of 54 percent in February.
It’s no surprise to see this turnaround. During the Obama years, it was much easier for Republicans to stay unified by merely pointing out the many problems with Obamacare: lack of choice, higher premiums, fewer options of doctors and hospitals, insurers exiting markets. Once they took unified control of government, they were finally in the position of having to advance their own ideas for healthcare.
From the outset, their project was marked by incoherence resulting from the lack of consensus within the party about what to do about healthcare, despite seven years of promises to repeal and replace Obamacare. Instead of presenting their own alternative vision for healthcare focused on bringing down costs, Republicans fell into the trap of trying to argue that they would cover as many or more people as Obamacare.
The problem with this strategy was two fold. One, there was no way they could deliver on coverage levels if they also wanted to repeal the law, reduce taxes and spending, and were also criticizing higher deductible health insurance. Two, touting the importance of broadening coverage merely helped enshrine the idea that there was some sort of guarantee that the federal government should provide affordable healthcare.
Having been burned last year, Republicans seem content to boast that they repealed the individual mandate in their tax law and move on. But this approach will come back to haunt them.
This fall, weeks ahead of the elections, the news will be dominated by headlines about premiums skyrocketing, which Republicans did absolutely nothing to address.
Even more alarming, this experience will only embolden liberals to pursue their dream of bringing European-style socialized medicine to the United States once they regain power.
During the 1990s and into the 2000s, Republicans rested on their laurels in defeating the Clinton push for national healthcare in 1994. During that time, liberals regrouped and plotted their strategy to make another attempt at the right moment, which they did when Obama took power.
The inability of Republicans to deliver on their promise to repeal and replace Obamacare, which in turn boosted the popularity of the law, only reinforced the liberal view of expanding government. However controversial new government programs may be when they are passed, as benefits kick in, Republicans are afraid to change them, so they become entrenched.
Republicans have surrendered philosophical ground over government involvement in healthcare, and they squandered the final opportunity to reverse course, and lay the groundwork for a more market-based system.
The intellectual bankruptcy of the GOP means that liberals will be perfectly content to fill the idea vacuum. The liberal Center for American Progress has added its voice to other liberal groups in presenting a vision for a socialized “Medicare for All” scheme that would enhance the existing program covering seniors and extend its availability to all Americans.
Whether liberals pursue this bold of an approach, or take other incremental steps to get there, the inability of Republicans to advance an alternative is going to pave the road to socialism.
