The Washington Post is reporting that a group of neoliberal Democrats are now trying to push back against efforts by progressives to make meaningful reforms to the failing health care system in this country. Since the article is behind a paywall, I’ll mention that International Business Times reporter David Sirota noted that the neoliberals are insulting us Midwesterners:
I live in a small, heavily-Republican village in the Midwest, and I can tell you that virtually nobody around here worships the pharmaceutical industry, in fact, most people view the pharmaceutical industry as, along with the health care industry in general, a major force driving up health care costs in this country. You’re not going to win over voters in the Midwest while effectively insulting them by claiming that they deserve higher prices on prescription drugs. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention this, but the pharmaceutical industry is a major driver of the opioid abuse crisis in this country.
Also, the path to Democratic victories in 2018 or 2020 isn’t through winning over people who enjoy high health care costs, it’s through winning over people who voted for a minor party presidential candidate in 2016 (Democrats can probably get many of those voters by supporting legalization of recreational marijuana), as well as anti-elite voters who are considerably more left-wing than Trump politically, but voted for Trump over Clinton (a lot of them probably voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primaries), which is about 1/5th of all Trump voters (unlike what the article I linked to suggests, it is possible for Democrats to win over some of the anti-elite voters while also standing up for immigrants, in fact, the trust-busting rhetoric in the Pelosi/Schumer “Better Deal” would strongly appeal to the anti-elite-types who voted for Trump).
I strongly believe that supporting either a single-payer health care system or anything that would be seen as a significant expansion of Obamacare (such as a public option or a Medicare or Medicaid buy-in) would play very well with Midwestern voters. The health care system is failing due to rising costs, and Trump and his Republican cohorts are only making rising health care costs worse.
This is yet another example of D.C. political elites thinking they know everything about Midwestern voters, when they actually don’t know a thing about us.
