A new poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation reinforces my belief that Democrats can beat Republicans in 2018 by running on nothing but health care.
Last month, Rep. Kristi Noem voted for the American Health Care Act, which would repeal the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion. Kaiser found that, nationwide, 84% of Americans want that Medicaid expansion to remain in place. Amazingly, that support is pretty much the same in non-expansion states like South Dakota as it is in expansion states like Minnesota and North Dakota:
Trumpcare’s other big whack at Medicaid, cutting funding with per capita caps or block grants, also enjoys only 26% support.
Senate Republican leaders are signaling they may not get a health care bill done this year. Their failure to act will demoralize their base, which rallied to six years of “repeal and replace” promises that the election of a Republican President on top of a Republican Congress was supposed to bring to fruition. But for voters outside that sad base, Republicans have already hung their hats on anti-Medicaid provisions that are even less popular than the Tweeter-in-Chief. Even if the Senate saves us from Trumpcare, voters won’t look at House members like Kristi Noem who voted for such woefully unpopular and damaging policies and simply forgive and forget.
Democrats, health care can be your #1 issue in 2018. Run with it.
And the kicker is that the 23M Americans who will lose their health insurance under the House version of Trumpcare would do so in order to give a gigantic tax break to the richest of Americans. I don’t think that’s gonna play well in either Pittsburgh or Pukwana.
From Pukwana to Pittsburgh, Democrats need to campaign with courage on this issue. We’re right, the Republicans are wrong, and the people are behind us.