Presidential debates are not held for the purpose of informing the public about the candidates running for president and their views. They are television shows, designed to do what other television shows do: get ratings, sell perfume and laptops, drill the significance of the wretched Geico lizard into our skulls. Political substance as a by-product of the profit motive: This is what passes for democracy in America. But let’s imagine a better world, one in which we could expect the moderators to ask questions that actually enhance our understanding of the candidates’ policies and not just spark the best spats and yield the cleverest zingers. With a field that’s likely to be blissfully smaller than ever, next week’s debate in Iowa, to be moderated by CNN and the Des Moines Register, is fertile ground for this sort of fantasy.

In the first few debates, the moderators approached the task of differentiating the candidates’ health care platforms with narrow goals in mind: challenge the Medicare for All proponents on the prospect of private insurance being eliminated or on whether middle-class taxes would go up. These inquiries did not actually seek to get more detail from candidates on how their policies would achieve these ends, but rather to force them to admit that their proposals were politically dangerous. Thankfully, the moderators of the more recent debates have gotten bored of these questions. So let’s imagine that next week’s interlocutors could ask some specific and useful questions about health care—what would those be?



To start with the biggest ask possible: Could a debate moderator please ask Joe Biden to explain, clearly and in his own words, what the following terms mean: Deductible, co-pay, co-insurance, and premium? In previous debates, Biden has demonstrated that he does not have any kind of grasp on the particulars of health care policy. This is fine in most walks of life but is not actually acceptable if you want to be president. He routinely confuses key terms, such as one bizarre instance when he said that his plan would have $1,000 co-pays. He has claimed repeatedly that Sanders’s single-payer plan would entail “a deductible in the paycheck,” which is not what a deductible is and makes as much sense as a zinger as when he said President Trump is only comfortable in a “mosh pit.” (It would also be great if a debate moderator could ask Biden what he thinks a mosh pit is.)



If we can’t have that, I would implore the moderators to find out why Biden claims his plan would achieve universal coverage, when his own website says it would leave around 3 percent of Americans, or more than 10 million people (roughly as many people as currently get their health insurance from the ACA exchanges), uninsured. You can say one or the other, but you cannot say that your plan is universal while it leaves people out. This is to say nothing of whether insurance is actually affordable and usable under his plan, which should be considered just as important in deciding whether a plan constitutes universal coverage. It is the number one job of any journalist interacting with presidential candidates to ensure that they are being honest, and Biden claiming his plan is universal is the height of dishonesty.



Both Biden’s and Pete Buttigieg’s plans involve reviving some form of the individual mandate; both candidates must be asked more detailed questions about what they have in mind. Biden has previously and explicitly said he would bring back the individual mandate, claiming it would be popular “compared to what’s being offered.” Buttigieg’s plan, meanwhile, involves what The Washington Post recently described as a “supercharged” version of the mandate, where the previously uninsured would be hit with a bill for their “retroactive” coverage on the public option throughout the year, possibly through tax filings. (For someone whose health care rhetoric has centered so squarely on “choice,” this is an interesting position for Buttigieg to take, and one that directly contradicts statements he’s made in the past.)

