Pamela Cruz. Peninsula 360 Press.
The 2020 presidential election will be critical for Americans, as every vote will count in shaping the country's future, and health care is no exception, as millions of people could gain or lose their health coverage.
With just days to go before the U.S. presidential election, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PCA) is on the line to continue or disappear, leaving more than 20 million people uninsured.
An unfavorable Supreme Court ruling on DCA could mean that millions of middle and lower class people will lose their health coverage in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has plagued the country for months.
Thus, several judges from the conservative wing could invalidate in large part or in its entirety this law, which was pushed by former President Barack Obama and which is known by many as "Obamacare", after Donald Trump is urging them to do so.
If Democrat Joe Biden wins the presidency, he could even serve a term to expand health coverage to millions more Americans, thus creating for the first time a government health insurance plan as an alternative to private coverage for middle-class workers.
Even people who live in states that have not expanded Medicaid (the U.S. government's health insurance program for people in need) could be enrolled in that new plan, which would mark a milestone in public health issues by including those who have been denied service for years.
Thus, Democrats see Trump's new Supreme Court nominee as a threat to ACA, as actions that allow low- and middle-income people access to a quality health care system could be thrown away, especially in these times when comprehensive insurance is so necessary because of COVID-19.
For his part, and in the face of a possible court ruling to eliminate the DCA, Trump says he has a "much cheaper and better" program than the current one, yet the White House has not shown that the plan exists.
But if the Democrats are in office again, they will have to deal with an economic recession and a pandemic, situations that will make them decide how ambitious the health care program will be.
According to Democrat Joe Biden's campaign estimates, 97 percent of Americans would have health insurance with their plan. While the Urban Institute modeled a program very similar to Biden's and found that all U.S. citizens would be covered, 6.6 percent of undocumented immigrants would remain uninsured.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that six million uninsured Americans are not legally present, which means Biden's plan would provide coverage to 24 million people currently uninsured, if Urban's projections are correct.
So the future of health care in the United States is at stake and, in one of its most extreme scenarios, 20 million people could lose their health insurance; in the other, 25 million could get coverage.
In November, voters will have in their hands the decision of who they want to write the next health chapter in the country.
