(Image: Allison Bell/TA)
America's health care debate is entering a new phase. Liberals, inspired by self-described socialists such as Sen. Bernie Sanders and Representative-to-be Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are excited about the possibility of "Medicare for All." Republicans have at the same time largely abandoned efforts to enact major reforms of health care.
This new phase of the debate is full of opportunity for Republicans, and peril for conservatives.
But perhaps it would be better to say that the debate is reverting to an older pattern. For roughly four decades, liberals have highlighted the flaws of the existing health care system, chiefly high costs and unequal access, and proposed increased governmental involvement as the solution. Conservatives talked up the dangers of bigger government, chiefly even higher costs and the disruption of existing arrangements, and reminded voters of the virtues of the status quo.
Most of the time, health care has been a back-burner issue, and discontent with the system has been a modest source of political strength for liberals. When health care has become a dominant issue, however, public fear of disruption has helped conservatives. From 2009 through 2016, Republicans were able to exploit public unhappiness with the changes that Obamacare first threatened to make and then did make.
There have been two brief exceptions to this pattern. In 1995-96 and 2017-18, Republicans advanced their own sweeping changes to health policy. Led by Newt Gingrich 20 years ago, they tried to reform Medicare and Medicaid. Over the last two years, they tried to replace Obamacare and reform Medicaid.
Both times the public's fear of change was turned against Republican politicians, who did not like the pressure one bit. Most of them are relieved to have dropped their party's Obamacare and Medicaid proposals. They are eager to settle into the familiar role of criticizing liberal health care proposals.
There's plenty to criticize. In polls, most people say they like their existing insurance policies — which may be a way for them to signal to politicians that they fear their meddling with those policies. The single-payer plans that are ascending among Democrats would by definition threaten most existing coverage.
