Can Republicans Regroup on Health Care?
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For all the Republican success in Senate and House races, health care continues to haunt the GOP.
About two-thirds of Americans support a government plan that competes with private insurance, according to a January Kaiser Family Foundation poll.
One reason that idea is popular is that Republicans have struggled to explain how a public option would exploit unlimited taxpayer financing to cannibalize competing insurers and move ever more Americans from generous employer insurance into plans that look like Medicaid. Some two-thirds of Americans who support Medicare for All (single payer) wrongly thought they’d be able to keep their current health insurance, Kaiser reported in October.
Under ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion, the feds paid states more to enroll prime-aged men above the poverty line than to cover the truly needy—even as Democrats claim to be the party of compassion. Republicans should broadcast that message across the suburbs and vow to correct the dysfunction.
It’s true the press will help the left disparage every Republican idea. But a public option that was too radical to pass as part of ObamaCare is now the moderate position in the Democratic Party,…
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