As more Democrats propose moving beyond the Affordable Care Act, the party may be steaming toward the same iceberg that sank Republican efforts to repeal the law.
The GOP’s drive to rescind the ACA ran aground in part because it pitted the party’s predominant ideology against the material interests of its changing electoral coalition. The growing liberal discussion about replacing the ACA with a government-run, single-payer health-care system—an idea that received a powerful boost when Senator Kamala Harris embraced it at a CNN town hall this week—could present Democrats with a mirror image of the same problem.
During the ACA debate, Republicans failed to recognize the degree to which their traditional priority of minimizing government involvement in health care could threaten the financial security of the older and working-class whites now central to their electoral fortunes. Similarly, Democrats may be underestimating how much of their new coalition—which increasingly relies on well-educated whites in major metropolitan areas—may resist entrusting the health-care system entirely to government control. CONT.
Ronald Brownstein, The Atlantic