Voters Reject GOP’s Health Care Agenda While Doctors, Scientists Win Key Races
Election results put Medicaid cuts, Affordable Care Act subsidies and access to mental health care at the center of the healthcare debate.
The overwhelming repudiation of Trump policies displayed by the results of yesterday’s election has many roots. Among them is a rejection of the administration’s authoritarianism and warmongering, its ICE shock troops and the soaring prices of everything from groceries to fuel. But the Democratic victory is also a powerful rebuke to the GOP’s health policies, including cutbacks to Medicaid and its approach to mental health.
As STAT News put it, “Republicans — who pushed sweeping, unprecedented health reforms, from Medicaid cuts to MAHA’s upheaval — had a terrible, no good, very bad election night on Tuesday.”
Some key candidates in the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, aligned with controversial Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., lost their elections, including Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas), a founding member of the MAHA Caucus, and Iowa Republican gubernatorial candidate Zach Lahn.
Democratic candidates who promoted trust in science and had a science or healthcare background, on the other hand, did well last night. Physician Amy Acton, who led Ohio’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, beat out Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy for the Ohio governorship. Her platform included forgiving medical debt, taking on “surprise” billing, making Medicaid more accessible and lowering prescription drug costs.
Pediatrician Annie Andrews of South Carolina and epidemiologist Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan, meanwhile, are the first Democrats with medical degrees to be elected to the Senate since 1969.
“My two decades as a physician have shown me in a thousand heartbreaking ways just how broken our health care system is,” Andrews said in her platform on reducing health care costs. Terming health care a “right” rather than a “privilege,” she vowed to maintain access to vaccines and work to prevent rural hospitals from closing, STAT added.
At the time of writing, Democrats have taken control of both chambers of Congress, winning at least 54 seats in the Senate and 234 in the House, with races in Alaska and Mississippi still pending. In their push for better healthcare, another STAT story reports, restoring Affordable Care Act subsidies and reversing Medicaid cuts will likely be Democrats’ first objectives. – Diana Hembree
The name “MindSite News” is used with the express permission of Mindsight Institute, an educational organization offering online learning and in-person workshops in the field of mental health and wellbeing. MindSite News and Mindsight Institute are separate, unaffiliated entities that are aligned in making science accessible and promoting mental health globally.
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