In a special episode of ‘What the Health?’ during the Aspen Ideas: Health festival, leading correspondents and health policy experts got together to decode how this election season might impact the American health policies in the coming years.
Decoding Presidential Elections And Health Policies
Chief Washington correspondent of KFF Health News, Julie Rovner, teamed up with Margot Sanger-Katz of The New York Times and Sandhya Raman of CQ Roll Call. Together, they tackled the role of healthcare subjects in the upcoming five-month away election. As they dove into diverse issues, a consensus on specific health issues like abortion, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act was made clear. They proclaimed that the future of these weighty programs will significantly hinge on the election results.
Abortion Policies Take The Center Stage
Policies about abortion are speculated to gain notable attention in the ensuing election. The Democrats seem eager to capitalize on these policies, which stimulate their voter base and, concurrently, split the Republican voters. Comparatively, contraception and in vitro fertilization issues are playing a more visible part in the 2024 elections in contrast to past ones.
The Prescription Drug Price Conundrum
Another health policy issue under the lens is high prescription drug prices. Americans have long viewed this issue as a revealing sign of the nation’s faulty healthcare system. Although the Biden and Trump administrations have counted it as a priority, the intricate nature of the issue makes it a tangled web to untangle. Progress is incremental and judging which party has the edge is challenging.
The Future of Major Health Programs
The presidency and Congress’s control after the upcoming elections will have a critical impact on several crucial health programs’ fates. For instance, the temporary subsidies making Affordable Care Act health plans more affordable will lose their validity by the end 2025. The consequences could be severe, with millions of Americans potentially being robbed off coverage due to unaffordability if these subsidies are not renewed.
Are Other Issues Overlooked?
This week’s episode also brought to surface that issues such as gun violence, opioid addiction, and mental healthcare are not taking the limelight in the 2024 races as they once did, but this could vary on different cases.
Moreover, key matters like the decaying long-term care system in the U.S. and a concerning lack of health professionals are not likely to become electoral issues even though they demand public debate.
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In conclusion, decoding the presidential election’s impact on health policies reveals that several critical issues could take centre stage. These issues significantly influence major health programs, abortion policies, and ever-increasing drug prices. However, it seems that some much-needed topics might be sidestepped, leaving many American citizens potentially overlooked.