Healthcare Policy
Katie Mills
Healthcare policy has been one of the most crucial yet polarizing issues of the 2020
election cycle. While COVID-19 has helped bring it to the forefront of the national debate, so has the Black Lives Matter movement, as healthcare is an extraordinarily intersectional field- inherently intertwined with racial, social, and economic issues. Numerous questions have arisen, such as whether or not healthcare is a basic human right, whether healthcare should be more centralized or privatized, and how the healthcare industry should work to serve those whom it has historically underserved.
The Biden campaign proposes keeping President Obama’s Affordable Care Act in place and modifying it slightly in order to address newer issues. It proposes providing a public insurance option (similar to Medicare) for those Americans whose insurance companies have not served them well, along with proposing a tax credit for middle-class families to counter the costs of health insurance. The campaign promises to ensure that discrimination in the healthcare industry is fought and conquered at the legal and judicial levels. At the core of its policy is the belief that access to healthcare (including reproductive care) is a basic human right.
The Trump campaign has voiced disdain for the Affordable Care Act (and repealed its
individual mandate), as it holds that private health insurance is typically preferable to public health insurance. The current administration has also declared mass opioid addiction a public health crisis, which has allowed grants to be used to fund task forces to combat it. The Trump campaign has yet to explicitly state whether or not it considers healthcare to be a right for all.