Memo to Democrats: Embrace Obamacare

Although it is only March, the post mortem has already been written for the Democratic performance in November’s  midterm elections.  CNN’s John King said the situation is “bleaker than bleak.”  A Democratic strategist said the numbers portend a “tsunami sized loss” for the party.  Whichever party controls the White House usually does poorly in off-year elections, but things can get better for the party, and embracing Obamacare may be the way to do that.

Thus far, the GOP strategy on the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare has been very effective, helped by the disastrous rollout last fall.  When David Jolly defeated Alex Sink in Florida’s special election this month, the GOP claimed it was because the anti-Obamacare message works.  The Democrats dispute this by saying Sink nearly won and that is almost a victory in itself, as the swing district was represented by a Republican for more than 40 years.  Both sides have it wrong.

First of all, voter turnout won the day in Florida.  This was a special election in an off year.  Fewer people vote in these elections.  Moreover, the people who show up at the polls are older, whiter and more conservative.  And, anger is a big motivator for most people.  So, yes, running against Obamacare helped the GOP here because it got more people to the polls.  And, yes, their message works in places like this because it is simple: you don’t like Obamacare and neither do we, vote for us.  Where their argument falls apart is the assumption that people will feel in November the way they feel today, and the Democrats can still win with Obamacare if they start to really work at it.

Here’s what Democrats should do and points they should make:

Own Obamacare.  Running away from the health care law helps no one.  So far, the GOP has won on this issue because supporters of the law have let opponents define it and set the rules for how we talk about it.  This has to stop.  The trick is to start talking up the law NOW.  The best time to talk about the benefits of Obamacare is not during a campaign or on a 30 second ad;people need to hear about how it helps them NOW.

Obamacare will be more popular in the fall.  The law is gets more popular all the time.  A recent USA Today/Pew Research Center poll earlier this year that showed that 56 percent of uninsured Americans plan to use a government exchange to get coverage. So far, five million people have enrolled through the plan. As more people get coverage and as memory of the horrible rollout fades, people will like it. One reason the GOP was so opposed to implementing the law was that they knew it is impossible to repeal a program people depend on.

Obamacare will not end our way of life.  The GOP is fond of saying that this is going to end our freedom.  Well, they said the same thing of Medicare.  Ronald Reagan once said, of the now-popular program, “We are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.”  That didn’t work out that way and neither will this.

Obamacare is not socialism.  If anything, it is forced capitalism as it mandates people buy something from a private company.  The idea of the individual mandate came from the Heritage Foundation.  This is from their 1989 report:

Mandate all households to obtain adequate insurance. Many states now require passengers in automobiles to wear seatbelts for their own protection. Many others require anybody driving a car to have liability insurance. But neither the federal government nor any state requires all households to protect themselves from the potentially catastrophic costs of a serious accident or illness. Under the Heritage plan, there would be such a requirement. This mandate is based on two important principles. First, that health care protection is a responsibility of individuals, not businesses. Thus to the extent that anybody should be required to provide coverage to a family, the household mandate assumes that it is the family that carries the first responsibility. Second, it assumes that there is an implicit contract between households and society, based on the notion that health insurance is not like other forms of insurance protection. If a young man wrecks his Pors c he and has not had the foresight to obtain insurance, we may commiserate but society feels no obligation to repair his car. But health care is different. If a man is struck down by a heart attack in the street, Americans will care for him whether or not h e has insurance. If we find that he has spent his money on other things rather than insurance, we may be angry but we will not deny him services – even if that means more prudent citizens end up paying the tab. A mandate on individuals recognizes this implicit contract. Society feels a moral obligation to insure that its citizens do not suffer from the unavailability of health care. But each household has the obligation, to the extent it is able, to avoid placing demands on society by protecting itself.

Obamacare is not a “job killer” nor will it “discourage work.”  This are common themes among opponents of the law.  Congressman Paul Ryan told the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that Obamacare will discourage people from finding jobs. and there are too many quotes from his party claiming it will hurt the US economy and job creation.  None of that is true.  In 2011, the Rand corporation did a study on the impact of health insurance on job creation.  They found the high cost of health insurance is a deterrent to entrepreneurship and small business creation: people stay in jobs rather than strike out on their own to keep employer-offered coverage.

Obamacare is not perfect but it is a step forward.  Our businesses have long been hurt by the requirement that they provide health insurance and have to compete globally against companies that do not.  Our citizens have been hurt by a system that is costly and ineffective. Approximately 45,000 people die each year in the United States because they lack access to health care.  It’s time for Democrats to stop running from the president’s signature law and start embracing it.

By: Alyson Chadwick

Alyson Chadwick is a political/news junkie and New Yorker transplanted to Washington, DC and currently working in Florida. Her career has included work on five presidential cycles, both sides of Capitol Hill, the 2012 Democratic Convention, Clinton White House, United Nations and multiple local and statewide campaigns. She is also a sad Met fan, which could be the most redundant sentence ever.