Tim Walz pick excites hopes of taking US healthcare beyond Obamacare era

As soon as Kamala Harris chose the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, for a vice-presidential nominee for the Democrats’ presidential ticket, supporters of the proposed extension of health care initiated the electrical charge. 
 
They witnessed a man who called healthcare a ‘fundamental right’, helped in altering medical credit collection, who sowed the bases for a broad state funded insurance, and who turned down privatized health insurance from joining Medicaid – a state-funded health insurance plan sponsored for the needy. Walz even came with Harris to an abortion clinic to support continuation of the service. 
 
It was the tingle that some had missed since the Obama epoch, and challenging for some to stifle their delight. 
 
Vice President Kamala Harris delivers a statement on the enforcement of abortion laws in Florida during an event on Wednesday, May 1, 2024 in Jacksonville Florida. (AP/John Raoux) 
Harris campaign centers healthcare and abortion rights: This is the kind of sentiment behind statements like: ‘If she wins, it’s because of Dobbs’. 

‘We’re having a party here in Ryder’s cabin,’ said the Democratic Minnesota state representative Liz Reyer, who assisted Walz in enacting legislation to reform the collection of medical debts in 2023. It was early October and she was drinking coffee in northern Wisconsin, while her dog was asleep – a very low-key Midwest type of happiness. This made Reyer realise the need to be emphatic on “how absolutely strongly I was pulling for Governor Walz to be the VP pick”. 
 
“It feels really important and like a huge opportunity,” said Reyer, about the possibility of making such reforms nationally. “I have a lot in common with Governor Walz who, as you know, grew up around here; he’s a good guy and he and I both believe that healthcare is a human right, so …” 
 
I will take the reader through most of the hostile events that have occurred to health reformers since the Obama period. Following the enactment of the health care legislation known as the Affordable Care Act or ‘Obamacare’, in 2010 the Democrats paid a price in the politics in the midterm elections and faced a surge of a conservative opposition movement refer to as the Tea Party. 
 
Worse, the ACA was the target of GOP anger until deep into the Trump presidency to an extent that rival politics drowned policy content. Republicans have stopped demanding ‘repeal and replace’ the ACA only in 2017, when the late senator John McCain which who was diagnosed with brain cancer, came back to the capital and single-handedly voted against Trump’s plan. 
 
Although Republicans were not able to repeal Obamacare, they were successful in another way: years of attacks left reduced space for extending coverage or controlling the price of health care, which is a kind of the uncompleted work Obamacre. 
 
Republicans policy intellectuals have since regressed back to stale think-tank ideas for a second Trump term mainly outlined in the Project 2025. Among the early 2000s hits now on a nostalgia tour: This needs to change and has to become possible to make healthcare shoppable. More privatization! Less regulation! Tax-free savings accounts! 
 
The former president has distanced himself from Project 2025, but the official Republican program does not differ much. More importantly, some of the authors of the project are connected to Trump’s current presidential campaign and his former administration. 
 
The 2024 Republican platform focuses on “transparency”, “choice” and “competition” (read: (regarding more shoppable prices and less regulation). It also pledges no “cuts” to Medicare, a government health plan for the elderly, while Project 2025 calls for additional privatization of the program. 
 
Presently, health insurance coverage is nears 92% of the population in the United States. It means that 26 million people do not have insurance and could be exposed to the rise in market price in the world’s most expensive health system. It is simple to lose everything, including all the money when a disastrous disease or condition develops. 
 
At that, it is important to recognize that, for those with health insurance, medical is still an issue of concern. Heathcare: forty-one per cent of Americans owe money to either a medical provider, credit card, or family member. A hugely popular Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker poll shows that when people have it or fear medical bills, they sacrifice on food, clothing, and other necessities. Sicker and die sooner: The medical debt crisis in America and the need for fresh action. 
 
At the same time, which is even more worrying, the cost of healthcare increases up to 17% of America’s gross domestic product, while the same figure among comparable nations is 9%. That is so even though Americans visit the doctor less often than people in other developed countries and experience worse health. 
 
As much as people may like to blame the insurance industries for all of America’s health problems, they cannot do so entirely but examples based on stories which indicate that at least some of the problems are as a result of problems with insurance industries include: adults waiting to get cataract surgery only when they attain Medicare eligible age or Americans who are too embarrassed to smile because their teeth is full of decay. 
 
Just what Harris and Walz’s healthcare platform will be is not yet known. Presidential and vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden in the 2020 Democratic platform supported public option, checked pharma cost and standing up for Obamacare. Some of this the administration achieved. 
 
Notably, as one of its first actions, the Biden administration has recently completed the first Medicare prescription drug price negotiation – a technique widely used in other developed countries but banned when Biden came to power. The newest available for the Democrats party was produced in July before Joe Biden pulled out of the race. 
 
What is clear is that Harris and Walz profiles are nearly alike. The fiscal Biden government sought to limit the price of insulin to $35 a month for patients on Medicare. Similarly, Walz introduced a bill for the rest of Minnesotans but not for them on Medicare – an act he called the ‘Alec Smith Insulin Affordability Act’; the man was 26-year-old Alec Smith, who died due to rationing his $1,300 monthly insulin. 
 
To pass these reforms most of which offered reform in medical debt collection that involved barring of hospitals from refusing to treat patients due to balances owed and halting the practice of transferring debt to the spouse, Walz collaborated with Reyer. Likewise, the Biden administration has joined the lawsuit on medical debts at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to pursue constraints through rule-making. 
 
Walz said in his inaugural speech as governor that he considered health care a ‘basic human right’. That is standard most other countries, and practically the motto for single-payer healthcare, and the kind of government run universal healthcare the people of the United States should be as proud of as the British are of the National Health Service. 
 
Likewise, Harris supported single-payer national legislation on health introduced in 2019 by senator Bernie Sanders. It is important not to overstep the mark, and that’s why she has been trying to tone down her extremism since the proposal to make such a radical change to the social structure failed. Her campaign has claimed that wouldn’t “push” single-payer as the president. Despite all this, it has aroused the interest of advocates. 

‘We see this as great from our perspective,’ said critical care doctor from Hawaii Dr Philip A Verhoef, who is a president of the largest single-payer health care reform advocacy group in the country, Physicians for a National Health Program. 
 
“Single-payer emerged suddenly ten years ago,” with the senator’s presidential campaign, Verhoef pointed out. “Before, no one ever mentioned this,” During Obamacare debates, single-payer proponents were “locked out,” Verhoef said. 
 
He also swiftly began to establish the concept of a public option for health insurance in Minnesota, whereby citizens could purchase insurance through the Medicaid program, and barred private for-profit insurance companies, including UnitedHealth, a giant, from participating in Minnesota’s Medicaid program. 
 
It is unclear just how the Harris-Walz ticket will take the passion of reformers who propelled Walker into office and turn it into policy and, more importantly, what it is that the two propose to do. For the time being activists are happy with this gentle slope, knowing that the more complicated conversations are yet to come. 
 
In this regard, many observers have pointed out that those in political office are inclined to think, ‘What can I get achieved without leading to systemic failure’, said Verhoef. ‘I like that attitude – in a way, that was the ACA: It helped a lot of people but 30 million people are still out of insurance in this country; people are still going bankrupt from medical bills. ’