- Position‹2 of 3›
- Joe Biden will be better for healthcare
- Argument1 of 3›
Joe Biden will improve the current healthcare system
Biden has vowed to introduce reforms to the healthcare system in order to simplify its structure and reduce its cost to the American people.
The argument
With Donald Trump’s continuous chants to “Repeal and Replace Obamacare” and reducing spending on healthcare year on year, Joe Biden has presented himself as a defender of the ACA. Joe Biden is aware of the importance of healthcare in the current socio-political climate. When asked whether he would veto “Medicare for All”, the plan championed by many of the more left-leaning Democrats like Bernie Sanders, Biden’s response was “I would veto anything that delays providing the security and the certainty of health care being available now”. This displays a clear understanding of the urgency required to protect the American people from the pandemic before introducing radical reforms to the healthcare system as it stands. Instead, he is aiming to preserve the current structure of mixed private and government funded plans to reduce costs and lower the disruption to the American people, instead focusing on tightening the rules on health insurers. Biden is also proposing a series of control prices for drugs and introducing premium tax credits for middle class families to help them pay for better coverage. To lower drug prices, Biden is looking to limit launch prices and price increases for medicines, and allowing consumers to buy prescriptions from abroad. As such, Biden is looking to expand and improve on the ACA by small and measured steps to reduce cost and confusion for the American people.
Premises
Counter-arguments
With pressure from the right to decrease government control and pressure from the left to provide more coverage and improve the system, Joe Biden will be walking a fine line. His plans are ambitious but will be criticized by both extremes of the political spectrum. This will make it hard to implement any changes, regardless of how positive they may be. Furthermore, as democrats, and particularly young democrats, increasingly support Medicare for all, Biden's stance against this proposal may serve to work against him with voters and support.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P1] Whether the ACA should be defended rather than replaced is the contested question, not a shared starting point. Both the repeal case and the Medicare for All case dispute it, and the premise assumes what the argument is meant to show. [Rejecting P2] A campaign commitment is a statement of intent, and the argument treats it as an accomplishment. Preserving a mixed structure while tightening rules on insurers describes a goal, not a demonstrated capacity to reach it. [Rejecting P3] Drug pricing measures and expanded premium credits require legislation. Both have been proposed repeatedly by both parties without passing, so the effect depends on congressional majorities the argument never discusses. [Rejecting C] What the premises support is that measured reform is intended, not that it will happen or improve outcomes. Squeezed between a left pressing for Medicare for All and a right pressing for less federal involvement, the political path is the part of the case that is missing.
Further reading
Jennifer Epstein, “Biden to Target Tax-Avoiding Companies Like Amazon with Minimum Federal Levy,” Bloomberg News, December 4, 2019, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-04/biden-to-target-tax-avoiding-companies-with-minimum-federal-levy.