As I write in March 2019, the major national health policy issue is whether the Democratic Party will support “Medicare for All” as the next stage in the long struggle for universal coverage in the United States. JHPPL has already published essays that touch on this important topic, such as Paul Starr's 2018 essay “Rebounding with Medicare: Reform and Counterreform in American Health Policy.”
Yet we are not in the post–Affordable Care Act era quite yet. While the ACA survived the attempts by congressional Republicans and the Trump administration to repeal it, struggles over the law's implementation continue. The Trump administration not only has repeatedly argued that Obamacare is collapsing of its own weight but also has used its executive powers to reduce efforts to encourage people to sign up for ACA plans and weaken enforcement of ACA regulations. While even sympathetic observers would acknowledge that the ACA is not...
