Health care is the key issue for many American voters in elections 2020

 America s the only industrialised nation in the world without a free public health care system

Healthcare is considered as one of the basic services every citizen needs. Free health care is hallmark of a welfare state. US is the only western country which has no free public health care universal system. Health care in America is one of the most expensive in world.    

Health care expenditures amounted to nearly 20% of US economy. In this term of the Presidential election, the debate started with a choice between Obama care and Trump care.

However, Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate and the Former vice President who served under Barack Obama, is hoping to expand the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and re-launch it under his own name, if he wins the elections.

On the other hand, the current President and the Republican candidate President Trump wants to scrap the whole deal altogether. This has started a debate over which approach would be better for the economy. 

Biden care, as many are now labelling it, aims to either increase the federal spending on healthcare by at least $2 trillion (and more) over a period of nearly ten years. Trump care, on the other hand, wants to either reduce the funding or, in Trump’s ideal world, completely suspend the federal funding.

The United States had nearly 46.5 million people without health insurance in 2010. This was when Obama decided to help out his fellow Americans and introduced ACA to assist and provide pocket-friendly healthcare insurance.

Now the count of Americans without health insurance has dropped down to nearly 30 million, and under Biden care, the Democrat party expects to reduce this number by at least 15 to 20 million further. Trump, on the other hand, has revealed no such plan and has time and again focused on the need to suspend or decrease federal funding for ACA.

Biden care, up to this point, does sound like a better plan. The question now is how Joe Biden will pump in more money into the healthcare plan.

More people can be covered under the healthcare scheme by subsidising health insurance purchases through tax credits. Biden has announced that he will be raising this amount by charging tax from the wealthy taxpayers and will expand public insurance to make sure the medical costs do not skyrocket. However, the plan sounds easier said than done, and whether or not Biden will be able to raise such funds from charging the wealthy groups is a tale that only time can tell. 

However, if Biden succeeds, the minority groups will be benefited the most as several pieces of research have shown that the minority groups in the US suffer more chronic diseases, including the novel coronavirus, in comparison to the White nationals.

One thing, however, that is very clear through Biden care, up to this point, is that if Joe Biden is successful in implementing his health care plan, it will be more beneficial for the economy as uninsured patients, as per few studies, do get expensive treatments and then end up in a bad credit score or if they are unable to pay then it negatively affects the financial stability of the hospitals.

While the Democrats are fighting to make sure their candidate wins the Presidential elections, the Republican President is also fighting another battle in the US court — one with the aim to repeal the ACA.

Trump has been unsuccessful in dismantling Obama’s healthcare plan in his four-year-long term. However, he is now fighting a court battle to fulfill his dream. A Supreme Court hearing is scheduled a week after the US elections. 
However, if Trump wins the court hearing (which is not something the experts foresee), there is no specified backup plan to replace the insurance of the almost 21 million Americans who rely on Obama care. 

Some seem to believe that the only backup plan Trump has right now is to distribute the ACA funds to respective state governments who can further assist people by buying private health insurance and provide better coverage even to low-income households, provided it is not misused by the states.

Which leader has a better healthcare plan is a tough decision because while Biden is simply amplifying his former President’s plan, the current President is not revealing his whole set of cards yet. So, whether or not Americans will be able to afford proper healthcare will now only be clear once the next President of the US elections is chosen after the November 03 elections.

                                                                     Khalid Bhatti