Price and Ryan were the main architects of the Republican health bill. They tried to persuade the country to return to a more laissez-faire system in which if you didn’t have insurance, it was your problem. They failed, spectacularly. Again, Americans weren’t willing to abandon basic economic decency.
But Price may not be finished. This weekend, Trump tweeted that “ObamaCare will explode,” and Price, now Trump’s secretary of health and human services, has the authority to undermine parts of the law. Here’s where the irony begins: He can more easily hurt the conservative parts than the liberal parts.
So if voters like government-provided health care and Republicans are going to undermine private markets, what should Democrats do? When they are next in charge, they should expand government health care.
They should expand Medicaid further into the working class. They should open Medicare to people in their early 60s. They should add a so-called public option to the private markets. They should push the United States closer to single-payer health insurance. It will take time and involve setbacks, but they are likely to succeed in the long run.
Until then, the future of socialized medicine is in the hands of Dr. Tom Price.
