A rare opportunity: Will they seize it?

Congressional Democrats have been handed a rare opportunity, as a minority party, to ride up on a white horse and save the day.

Will they do it?

The Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, after seven years of promises to repeal (and from some of them, to replace) the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), failed to do so. Some of them thought the bill went too far. Some thought it didn’t go far enough.

So despite a 40-vote majority in the House, the GOP couldn’t come up with a plan that could win the 215 or so votes necessary for adoption.

What about the Democrats?

They decided they had nothing to gain by supporting the repeal-and-replace effort in any form. The Congressional Budget Office reported that some 24 million Americans would lose health care insurance coverage in the next few years if the bill succeeded. Why would Democrats want to do that?

They wouldn’t, and they didn’t.

Hundreds of thousands of Iowans who would have been left without health coverage can breathe easier, at least for now.

But for months and months, Democrats across the nation have said that changes to Obamacare are warranted. Their standard line is something like, “Is Obamacare perfect? Of course not. But it should be improved, not repealed.”

However, that’s where the Democrats stop. I think I pay considerable attention to the health care debate, but I can’t recall any coherent, detailed Democratic proposal to improve the Affordable Care Act.

The Democrats have been playing defense on Obamacare for years. Maybe it’s time they go on offense.

The situation is ripe for it. If Democrats and Republicans both think Obamacare has problems, what better time to fix them?

If a solution were easy, it would have been done by now, of course.

Democrats, like moderate Republicans, don’t want to kick Americans off their health care coverage.     

Retaining the millions of people who have received coverage through Obamacare apparently requires subsidies for modest-income folks and for expanded Medicaid. The unsuccessful Republican bill called for hundreds of billions of dollars of tax cuts for the wealthy that now go to provide those subsidies. Democrats aren’t likely to agree to that level of tax cuts.

But right now is the perfect time for Democrats to speak up about the improvements they say Obamacare needs. Maybe enough Republicans in the House can agree on some of them, and the result could be a better health care structure than we now have.

Republicans who took the pledge of simply repealing Obamacare during the 2016 campaign, and for the past seven years, will probably not agree to anything that improves the program.

But a chunk of the GOP majority got an earful during their town halls back home in recent weeks, especially in some of the Rust Belt and Appalachian districts that swung Republican in 2016. Maybe some of them are ready to (horrors!) commit bipartisanship and join Democrats in trying to improve their constituents’ health, their finances and their quality of life.

The ball is in the Democrats’ court, to list their improvements for Obamacare and then to approach Republicans with an invitation to work together.

Hamlet got it right: “Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.”