Are we really going to re-legislate healthcare reform?

By Christopher Robertson

A minority of the Members of Congress are threatening to cause the United States government to default on its debts, unless the majority members agree to repeal or defund the Affordable Care Act, which Congress passed just a few years ago.  There will presumably be some sort of negotiated solution.  I worry that the negotiation range is being defined in a skewed way, between one pole and a moderate status quo, which is already the result of a prior negotiation.  Seems like we have a one-way ratchet here.

My thought:  perhaps the negotiations should go both ways, so that the end-result is more balanced.  What if the Democrats made symmetric threats to cause default, unless:

• Medicare is expanded to cover all the poor who do not qualify for Medicaid (filling the gap the Supreme Court created in its “coercion” opinion),
• The Federal government creates a public health insurance option, to compete along with the corporate insurers (which was killed in final negotiations to pass the ACA),
• The Federal government gets explicit authority to provide insurance subsidies in the health insurance exchanges it sets up for states that have refused, oh and, as a kicker,
• Ronald Reagan International airport (DCA) is re-named Jimmy Carter International Airport.

Ok, that last one is silly, but it might make for a fun bargaining chip, since it symbolizes the strategic game that is now being played, as we re-legislate settled questions.  Positional bargaining is not pretty or enlightened, but if these chips can be traded, we might end up in the fallback position of keeping the Affordable Care Act as the negotiated compromise that it already is.  Of course, the ACA is also the default rule, which has a nice double meaning in this context.