Democratic presidential contender Martin O’Malley unveiled a healthcare plan on Tuesday that emphasized strengthening Obamacare but avoided any mention of the single-payer healthcare plan championed by rival Bernie Sanders.
O’Malley, lagging in the polls far behind frontrunner Hillary Clinton and democratic socialist firebrand Sanders, emphasized his record as a two-term governor of Maryland and his goal of a healthcare system with “better payment models, with better incentives”.
Although the Maryland Democrat has moved to the left in the course of his campaign in an attempt to compete with Sanders as a progressive alternative to Clinton, O’Malley’s proposal marked a return to his technocratic roots.
Much of O’Malley’s plan focused on adjusting budgeting for hospitals to try to more closely align healthcare costs with the value of the services that patients receive. However, he did stake out ground on the left by pledging to use the tools of the regulatory state including the Federal Trade Commission to lower the price of prescription drugs. O’Malley also reiterated his opposition to the recently proposed merger of pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Allergan.
However, while O’Malley touted his achievements in Maryland, some of the measures in the state that he cited came in an attempt to cope with the failure of the state’s health insurance exchange under the Affordable Care Act, Barack Obama’s signature healthcare legislation. The website for the state’s exchange crashed almost immediately upon its launch and the ensuing debacle cost taxpayers millions and was credited as one of the reasons that Anthony Brown, O’Malley’s handpicked successor, lost the gubernatorial race to succeed him.
