The country’s debate over Obamacare is nearly over no matter who is elected president in November, top Democrats in health policy predicted Wednesday.
If Hillary Clinton wins, Republicans will realize it’s fruitless to keep fighting the Affordable Care Act and cease their efforts to repeal it. If Donald Trump wins, he will work with Congress to ditch most of the law’s biggest provisions, ensuring the law’s demise once and for all.
Those predictions were made by Ron Pollack, president of Families USA and one of the biggest advocates for President Obama’s healthcare law. He and other health policy Democrats were speaking at a panel discussion at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
“I think this election is an inflection point, and here’s the controversial thing I would say,” Pollack said. “At the end of 2017, I think the debate about the Affordable Care Act will have significantly subsided, but with very different results depending on who’s elected.”
Since 2010, when the law was passed, Republicans have made election promises to repeal the healthcare law, but Obama has stood in the way. Trump has promised to ditch the law if he wins the White House, giving the GOP perhaps its last chance to get rid of a measure they despise. But if Clinton is president for the next four or eight years, the law could be too entrenched to get rid of it easily.
Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, also predicted Republicans will show more willingness next year to work with Democrats on improving the law, if Clinton is elected.
“We hear stories of Republicans from pretty conservative districts who want to make the exchanges work better,” Tanden said. “They’re not going to say that out loud right now, but I think that’s where we’ll be next year.”
