Speaker Pelosi is Right in Supporting Obamacare Expansion Over Medicare for All

Speaking to Jim Cramer on CNBC, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated that she supports expanding the Affordable Care Act rather than trying to replace it with a "Medicare for All" program that she views as unrealistic.

CNBC: Pelosi’s thoughts on how to improve the nation’s health-care laws appear to align with those of former Vice President Joe Biden, who in his 2020 presidential bid is calling for building on provisions of Obamacare, formally known as the Affordable Care Act.

“I believe the path to ‘health care for all’ is a path following the lead of the Affordable Care Act,” Pelosi told Cramer. “Let’s use our energy to have health care for all Americans, and that involves over 150 million families that have it through the private sector.”

As we have discussed before, Pelosi is correct because Americans that have health care as part of their employment benefit package are, generally, quite pleased with the current system. The majority of those individuals support efforts to get everyone insured, but not by forcing them onto a "Medicare for All" plan.

Illuminate: "Medicare For All" is a great slogan and would be a fine idea if the majority of Americans didn't already have tax free health care insurance provided or subsidized by their employer. Most folks, especially college educated suburban voters, are quite happy with that arrangement and really have no desire to pay additional taxes to pay for Medicare For All. However, they will support expanding Medicare to allow older Americans, starting at 50 or 55, to buy into the program, as Sen. Amy Klobuchar has proposed. Additionally, Democrats should again put forward an affordable "public option" Medicaid program that younger people can buy into through the [Obamacare] health care exchanges. The combination would greatly reduce the number of uninsured in America."

Even Democratic voters, prefer Obamacare expansion over "Medicare for All."

Kaiser Family Foundation: "The latest KFF Health Tracking Poll finds a larger share of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents preferring approaches that expand coverage building on the Affordable Care Act (55%) rather than replacing the ACA with a national Medicare-for-all plan (39%)."

Additionally, Speaker Pelosi understands that the only way Donald Trump will be reelected in 2020 is if Democrats nominate a candidate with a platform that is viewed as too "extreme."

Illuminate; "The platform they [Democrats] need to re-capture the White House must be tailored to excite the broad coalition of voters that allowed them to win back the House of Representatives. However, if they move too far to the left they will alienate many of the independents and college educated suburban voters that embraced the party in 2018."

#news #NancyPelosi #ACA #healthcare

By: Don Lam & Curated Content