Health Care and the 2020 Us Election | Biomed Grid

Health care promises to be a leading issue in the 2020 US election. In the past, health care policies helped Democrats get elected. Currently, new policies may not give the Democrats such a clear advantage because of divisions in the party associated with contenders for the presidential nomination. Health care promises to be a critical issue in the forthcoming US election, ranking among the most contentious issues roiling the public sphere and accentuating the division between Republicans and Democrats [1]. To a large extent, health care played a similar role in the 2018 midterm election [2,3]. According to Gallup's Midterm Election Benchmark poll, 80percent of registered voters interviewed less than a month before that election chose health care as the most important issue affecting their vote for Congress. Although its importance was greater by 15percentage points among Democrats than Republicans, 72percent of the latter still chose health care as most important [4]. Voters, concerned by Republican promises to do away with the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), chose Democratic candidates in sufficient numbers and in sufficient states to swing the House to a Democratic majority. Contributing to that outcome were Independents, many of whom had drifted away from previous support for the Democrats. If in 2018, votes for the Democrats signaled support for Obamacare and fear that its benefits would disappear under Republican control, the coming election presents a more complex environment for contending parties and uncertain voters. The official Republican position remains opposed to Obamacare along with hints of some still undefined promise to replace it with a new policy [5]. But currently, it is the Democratic presidential hopefuls that now offer a range of alternatives contributing to a new uncertainty. The political environment today, compared to 2018, differs in multiple ways. Currently there is a sitting Republican President, still determined to do away with Obamacare. Although there is a majority Democratic House committed to, at the very least, the continuation of Obamacare if not its expansion, it lacks internal unity, with sharp divisions between progressives and moderates and between newcomers and an old guard. Finally, there is an unprecedented number of Democratic presidential candidates vying to move to the forefront by a convincing display of their potential to lead the party to victory.