I think it's important for Democratic members of Congress to get aligned on how to respond to failure of the AHCA bill. It won't go anywhere in this Congress, but it's important for messaging and the 2018 midterms to begin putting out an effective response to what's been going on regarding health care in America. I think Democrats should focus on the following: 1. We expected this bill to fail, because it was poorly conceived, was not well thought out, and reduced coverage and affordability while giving massive tax breaks to those who least need them. 2. Contrary to the views expressed by Republicans, the ACA is a well designed health care system that extended health insurance to millions of previously uninsured or underinsured Americans by working with doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, and drug companies to reform the existing health insurance market by (a) requiring insurance companies to offer policies with a minimum standard of benefits and protections; (b) requiring everyone to buy health insurance to spread the risk as widely as possible (the mandate); and (c) providing subsidies to those Americans who previously could not afford to buy insurance coverage by imposing taxes on high income earners, drug companies, and others who would benefit from increased health care spending. 3. Although the ACA was well designed and remains stable, fewer people are participating than originally estimated, particularly among the young and healthy population and, as a result, fewer insurers are choosing to participate in the individual exchange market. 4. This undesirable trend is fixable, and we will vote with Republicans if they propose a bill to revise the ACA by choosing one or more of several different options to provide greater subsidies for insurers and limiting their risk of loss; these options include increasing the level of subsidies paid to insurance companies, extending the "risk corridor" and "reinsurance" programs within the ACA to protect insurers against unanticipated risk, both of which programs expired at the end of 2016, including a public option, and increasing the penalty for not buying health insurance (the current penalty is much lower than paying the premiums).
Ideas taken from an article in the NYT at https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/upshot/politics-aside-we-know-how-to-fix-obamacare.html?_r=0.
None of these ideas are likely to pass or even considered with a Republican controlled Congress, but I think it's important to let constituents know that the ACA is not "fatally flawed," that it can be fixed, and fairly simply, and that Democrats have a plan to fix the ACA if they win a majority of the House in 2018. In other words, with a little thought and preparation, the leaders of the Democratic Congressional delegation could begin framing the issue as "Do you want the debacle that was the AHCA, which even Republicans who were in control of the Congress and the White House couldn't agree on, or do you want to help fix the ACA, which provides much broader coverage for far more people? We think the choice is simple."
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