If Tuesday night's Democratic presidential debate goes like all the others have, the moderators will spend an inordinate amount of time trying to egg the participants into having a fight over who's the most socialist when it comes to Medicare for All and how much taxes will be raised on middle America. Because that's what's easy for the moderators and it doesn't require they do any homework. If the candidates are smart, they'll ignore that and change the subject to what voters are actually worried about when it comes to the healthcare system, right now.
According to the latest Kaiser Family Foundation health tracking poll, that's women's health care, surprise medical bills, lowering healthcare costs, prescription drug prices, and the opioid epidemic, in addition to the future of the Affordable Care Act. According to the survey, 58 percent of the primary election audience of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents want to hear the candidates talk about women's health care and reproductive care specifically, which makes sense since women predominate in the party. It might be a given that Democrats support a woman's right to make her own medical decisions, but voters want to hear that reiterated.
Likewise, 52 percent want to know how the candidates will get rid of surprise medical bills and 50 percent want to hear about how they'll lower the amount people have to pay for health care, apart from plans for Medicare for All, and 47 percent and 46 percent respectively want more discussion about prescription drug costs and the opioid epidemic. Forty-six percent say too little time has been spent talking about the future of the ACA. That could mean how the nation transitions to a single-payer system from the ACA, or how the ACA should be improved to address those other concerns people still have—high out-of-pocket costs and shrinking access to reproductive care for women.
If the moderators want to do better, they'll ask about these things, the sticking points in a larger healthcare reform. Like how do you address providers—the hospitals and doctors that comprise the biggest chunk of healthcare spending and which are the drivers of those surprise bills. Or how do you rein in the pharmaceutical industry to end abuses like the obscene hikes in the cost of insulin that are ending in preventable deaths? Or how do you make sure that rural and underserved areas have hospitals and doctors to staff them?
The moderators are unlikely to do that, so what the candidates need to do is change the subject and talk about what the audience wants to hear. That especially includes a robust defense of women's right to choose and everything that follows with that, which has the added bonus of getting to talk about judicial nominations—something else that debate moderators have tended to ignore.