There is an old saying –“never buy a pig in a poke”. Of course, to understand the saying, you have to know what a “poke” is. A “poke” is an Old English term for a kind of bag. If you buy a pig in a “poke”, you are buying the pig without seeing it. You trust the seller that the pig lives up to the sales pitch, but if you don’t open the “poke”, you won’t know.
The Biden Plan
While the current Presidential campaign seems high on rhetoric and low on facts, on one issue of particular importance to Americans there is a clear “pig in a poke”. Joe Biden has put a detailed health care plan “on the table”. He wants to use the Affordable Care Act, Medicare and Medicaid as the structure to expand greater health care benefits to Americans. He wants to use the powers of the Congress to gain control of the cost of pharmaceuticals. And he has a goal that every American will have access to health care.
Biden makes it clear: there is no “free” healthcare. He wants access to good healthcare to be an American “right” rather than a privilege of employment. The Biden plan includes a “public option”, a Federal insurance program as well as private for-profit plans. He’s not demanding that Americans give up their private health insurance, but that we recognize that not everyone has access to it, especially in an economy with high unemployment, and our current world of the “gig” economy.
We know where Biden stands on this issue. The disadvantage of putting out a “plan” is that it is open to analysis, criticism. Each particular point can be picked apart.
The Trump Offer
President Trump has promised a comprehensive healthcare plan for years. In the past few months, he’s promised a “plan in the next couple of weeks”. But so far, his sole plan is headlined “repeal Obamacare” and then he’ll figure out the rest later. An internet search for the Trump healthcare plan brings up several attacks on the Affordable Care Act, but when you find an address on the Trump Campaign website dealing with healthcare, you instead are sent to a “lost” page featuring Joe Biden: donaldjtrump.com/positions/healthcare-reform.
The President has had four years to develop a comprehensive healthcare plan. He’s even had three years since the famous John McCain “thumbs down” vote that saved the Affordable Care Act. Instead, the Trump Administration has continued to look forward to a “great healthcare plan” without ever putting any details in front of the public.
Rhetoric
Many Americans are tired of the rhetoric. They claim they want to decide their Presidential vote based on “the issues”, not the personalities. “Sure, President Trump Tweets a whole lot of distasteful things, but look what he can accomplish,” we constantly hear. But here’s the problem: we don’t know what the Trump healthcare plan is, other than “Not Obamacare”. So we can’t decide on the issues, because there are no alternative plans. There’s simply a detailed Biden plan, and “not that one” from Trump.
The President is offering the American people “a pig in a poke”. If there’s no detailed plan, then there’s no target for criticism. But what we do know is this: the President constantly saying that he would protect “pre-existing conditions”. But in fact, the Trump Justice Department is currently in the Supreme Court trying to have the Affordable Care Act ruled unconstitutional. The net effect of that is to go back to “before” the Affordable Care Act, when those with pre-existing conditions could be charged higher rates for insurance, or denied insurance altogether.
Decide
The first thing to do is get past the rhetoric. No one is offering “free” healthcare, and no one is saying Americans should “die in the streets”. What we do have is a relatively detailed plan from the Biden campaign, and no plan at all from the Trump campaign. And we have that in the middle of a national pandemic, when testing for COVID-19, and ultimately administering a vaccine, is a costly and important healthcare action.
So examine the Biden plan. And if you don’t like it, keep in mind that you don’t have the option of knowing what the Trump plan is. Don’t hold your breath waiting for it either, you’ll just need healthcare from lack of oxygen. There is no incentive for the Trump Campaign to put out a plan: it will just become another target. It’s all a salesman’s pitch: “trust me, it’ll be a ‘great’ plan”. It’s a “pig in a poke”.
