President Biden’s campaign plans to use Obamacare as an issue against President Trump. With polls favoring Republicans on major issues, like the economy and immigration, the Biden campaign has seized on President Trump’s recent comments that Obamacare is failing and should be replaced. The media has fallen in line, suggesting Trump aims to repeal Obamacare. President Trump is right with his critique and the best, most realistic strategy would be to fix key problems with Obamacare while addressing other underlying problems with the health system that frustrate American families.
To fix Obamacare, it’s important to first take stock of its three key failings. First, Obamacare worsened the quality of individual market health insurance and caused millions of people to replace better coverage with worse coverage. Obamacare substantially raised premiums and deductibles and most plans exclude top hospitals and doctors. Second, the rising costs from Obamacare led more small businesses to drop health insurance. Third, the law’s coverage expansion now costs taxpayers more than $200 billion a year — almost all of which are subsidies to health insurers — without improving health outcomes.
