Democrats Outline “Top-to-Bottom Effort to Highlight Health Care” [USA Today]

Read Democratic Committees’ Memo: Health Care Is On Every Ballot, From Top To Bottom

A coalition of the Democratic campaign arms including the DSCC released a memo yesterday outlining how health care continues to be a central issue for voters in 2020. Now in the midst of a public health crisis, Republicans at every level are fighting to gut pre-existing conditions protections and make it harder for Americans to get health care coverage. As the committee chairs wrote, “we’re going to keep reminding them of that through November.”

Read the memo here. 

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

USA Today: Democrats outline election plan to make health care their top issue amid coronavirus

By Christal Hayes

May 19, 2020

Key Points:

• The campaign arms for Democrats, from the presidential contest and congressional races to state legislatures and gubernatorial elections, have centered their focus on a single issue they expect will lead them to victory in November: health care.

• Though Democrats have consistently focused on health care as a major issue in the fall elections, coronavirus upped the stakes and thrust the topic even more into the spotlight as more than 1.5 million Americans have tested positive for COVID-19 and more than 91,000 have died from it. 

• In a six-page memo shared with USA TODAY, the Democratic National Committee – along with campaign arms for Democratic senators, representatives, governors, attorneys general and state legislatures – outlined a top-to-bottom effort to highlight health care in races across the country in addition to GOP-led efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

• Democrats plan to make those legal challenges and years of GOP animosity toward the the landmark legislation signed into law in 2010 by President Barack Obama a central piece of their strategy.

• “It is the worst possible time to try to dismantle our health care system,” the chairs and co-chairs for the six groups said in a statement. “But Republicans at every level of the ballot are fighting in court to take away people’s health care – or blocking millions of working families from life-saving Medicaid coverage. Voters know that Democrats are the party of health care. We’re going to keep reminding them of that through November.”

• The memo outlines how Democrats will focus on the issue in campaigns level-by-level. It notes that in the presidential election, the focus will be on Trump’s health care plan, and in congressional elections – in which Democrats will defend their majority in the House and aim to take control of the Senate – there will be an emphasis on incumbent GOP voting records on health care. 

• Democrats plan to put a spotlight on Republican governors and attorneys general who  fought Medicaid expansion and went to court to push back against the Affordable Care Act.

Read the full story here.

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