The core of progressive economic policy is providing material benefits to people

[Source]

The title statement should be banal, and yet some people who (correctly) approve of the Biden administration’s more aggressive antitrust policies but (very, very incorrectly) dismiss the historic expansion of the welfare state that happened under Obama have completely lost sight of what we’re supposed to be doing here:

the abject suffering caused by Obamacare is quite a take— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) August 12, 2024

The idea that the problem with the pre-ACA status quo was a lack of competition among insurers happens to be the position of Stoller’s good buddy JD Vance. The problem is that it’s ludicrously false — the problem wasn’t a lack of competition per se, it was that “taking your premiums for threadbare insurance and just cancel it on the off chance you get an illness your policy actually covered” was a perfectly legal business model and no amount of competition could require the market to provide affordable insurance that covered anything. Which is why the repeal bill Vance loved would have resulted in tens of millions of people losing coverage and the coverage of the people lucky enough to keep it getting worse.

What was needed was the actual most important tools of progressive economic policy: redistribution and regulation. The ACA did this less well than comparable liberal democracies — who of course generally have more “consolidated” or fully public insurance — but far, far, far better than the status quo ante Stoller longs for because antitrust policy is the only hammer in his policy arsenal. Providing a huge expansion of benefits for the poor, working class, and middle class funded by upper-class tax increases, it is the most radical downward distribution of wealth passed by Congress in the last century, as well as an effective use of the regulatory state to eliminate or curtail the worst practices of the insurance industry, abuses that market competition is inherently unable to prevent.

On a more general level, the surprisingly progressive aspects of the Biden administration has caused some to think that every difference from Obama was an improvement. With respect to its commitment to full employment and antitrust, this is true. But the grab bag of temporary welfare state expansions that were predictably allowed to expire was an area where (in part because of smaller Senate majorities) governance under Biden was substantially worse. If she wins and gets a Democratic Congress, Harris needs to focus on a major priority or two and make it a permanent rather than temporary expansion. A lot of good came out of the Biden administration, but no domestic legislation as good or important as the Affordable Care Act.