Obamacare 2.0, And The Virtual Book Tour Comes to New York City
The ACA was supposed to be a "starter home"
Nobody ever thought the Affordable Care Act was perfect, or even close to perfect. THE TEN YEAR WAR gives the full backstory on the compromises that the final legislation included — and why architects of the law felt compelled to make them.
The hope was that, once the congressional debate was over, it would be possible to tinker with and improve the program, in the same way lawmakers and officials had been continually upgrading programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security over the years. This is why the Affordable Care Act’s champions talked about it as a “starter home.”
But fixing up and improving the starter home was never possible, because Republicans were so committed to the program’s demise — as former President Obama lamented in our interview:
You get the program started, you figure out what the kinks are, what works, what doesn’t. You amend, build, improve, refine ― that kind of iterative process, where you’ve set a goal and gotten the foundations laid, and then Congress in a cooperative fashion works to keep making it better. That process, which is very beneficial because you’re getting real data and feedback about what’s working and what’s not ― that’s less available to you now. The process that built Social Security, built Medicaid, Medicare, that only works if you got both parties working in good faith.
That structural problem will exist until the Republican Party starts behaving differently. At least for the moment, there are no signs of that happening. But Democrats now have an opportunity to act on their own, because they control both the White House and Congress. And that work is already underway.
A Sunday story in the New York Times, by Sarah Kliff and Margot Sanger-Katz, has the details on what’s coming to be known as “Obamacare 2.0” — a “plan to refashion regulations and spend billions through the stimulus bill to make Obamacare simpler, more generous and closer to what many of its architects wanted in the first place.” (The article even cites THE TEN YEAR WAR.)
Those improvements are probably just the beginning. A few weeks ago, my HuffPost colleague Jeffrey Young and I walked through the Biden health care agenda. Undoing Trump-era changes is a big part of that. After that, the administration and its allies are likely to pursue some more new initiatives.
High on the list will be getting the federal government involved in regulating drug prices and creating some sort of “public option” — although, as you might expect, those two would be much bigger political lifts than simply fortifying the existing program with extra funding.
Stay tuned.
Tuesday’s Virtual Event Is A Special One
At 4 pm ET on Tuesday, THE TEN YEAR WAR virtual tour zooms into New York City, for an event hosted by Roosevelt House, the public policy institute at Hunter College.
Those of you who know me can understand why this event, of all events, means a lot. My mother Elaine, who passed away last summer, was a proud Hunter graduate. She got her bachelor's there, in 1962, and returned for a master's that she got in 1967.
It's where she learned to teach and, of course, it was yet another way to spend time in her favorite place on earth: Manhattan. Whenever I would visit New York, I would make a point of taking the Lexington Avenue local (#6), stopping at the 68th Street/Hunter College station, and calling Mom just to let her know where I was standing.
Economist Partha Deb will be moderating and I know already of a few well-known figures from the progressive health care community who are planning to watch, and maybe submit some questions too. I can't wait.
The event is open to the public and signed books will be available for shipment through Shakespeare & Company.
Come join us virtually! Info and link here:
http://www.roosevelthouse.hunter.cuny.edu/events/jonathan-cohn-ten-year-war-obamacare-unfinished-crusade-universal-coverage/
More options to buy the book here:
https://read.macmillan.com/lp/ten-year-war/
What The Health?
You may know Julie Rovner as the voice of health care policy and politics on National Public Radio. Like many of my colleagues, I know her as a role model -- and terrific person as well.
She is now at Kaiser Health News, where, among other things, she hosts the "What The Health?" podcast. Appearing on that show has been on my professional bucket list and now I can cross it off, because Julie invited me to talk about THE TEN YEAR WAR.
Julie, a proud graduate of the University of Michigan and alum of the Michigan Daily, is also a huge fan of the Wolverines — whose basketball team, incidentally, has been playing awfully well. So, naturally, that subject came up too.
Here's a link if you'd like to listen:
https://khn.org/news/article/podcast-khn-what-the-health-185-staffing-up-at-hhs-february-26-2021/
And here are some highlights from a recent Michigan basketball win, because why not?