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People protesting the Republican Party health plan. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
People protesting the Republican Party health plan. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Healthcare is the real key factor in the midterms

While the government is committed to making the anti-immigrant agenda its battle weapon, the main concern of the majority of voters is actually healthcare.

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If you have paid attention to the immense number of campaign ads for both parties during the lead-up to the midterm elections, you may have noticed a factor that continues to fly below the radar: healthcare.

Despite all the media coverage of the president's anti-immigrant statements, debates among candidates and the transformation of political figures into celebrities, the concern of the majority of voters is totally different.

According to several polls nationwide, the number one concern of the majority of U.S. voters is to find a political leader who wants (and ultimately succeeds) to design a plan that "keeps the parts of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that work and fix the parts that don’t," explained TIME magazine.

"In poll after poll, voters say access to affordable care is their top concern," the media explains. "An October Kaiser poll found that registered Democratic and independent voters in battleground districts listed health care the most important issue."

And this concern is not in vain.

The media exposes that since 2008, the average premium of a middle-class family "has risen by 55%", an increase twice as fast as wages, while deductions have tripled.

"While the ACA has succeeded in extending health care coverage to 20 million people through expansions of Medicaid and federal subsidies, it has done very little to keep costs down for many others," TIME concludes.

This "failure,” as Republicans like to call it, has been instigated as an opposition to President Barack Obama's measures, an agenda that has been exacerbated by the Trump administration.

That is why during this electoral cycle we have seen an increase in the promises of a Medicare for all, by many Democrats, while others continue pushing the need to cover people with pre-existing conditions (such as heart disease, diabetes or even cancer). 

Candidates such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have followed the plan designed by independent Senator Bernie Sanders, which suggests "expanding Medicare (a state-funded health insurance program for senior citizens) to cover all Americans," VOA News explained.

Other contenders such as Rep. Beto O'Rourke in Texas have argued for an increase in federal regulation to keep health care costs low, but distancing themselves from the Ocasio and Sanders proposal.

However, Republicans have decided to support medical insurance companies, insisting on rescinding ACA and eliminating coverage for patients with pre-existing conditions.

The argument put forward by the GOP is that "promoting an increase in the free market and in competition and innovation" would work better when offering health services, and President Trump has argued that the Democrats "intend to establish socialism" with the measures of medical coverage.

If the midterm elections are to be won, the Democrats would have the option of negotiating a solution that will satisfy – in the short or long term- the urgency of the majority of the voters, but they will also need a bipartisan commitment for legislation to finally pass the Senate, and for the president to sign it.

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