(CNN) Joe Biden is making a very big bet on the status quo.
That’s true for his 2020 presidential campaign generally (his argument is that Donald Trump’s election is a fever dream from which the GOP — and the country — will awake) but especially true on the issue that has proven decisive in a majority of elections in recent memory: Health care.
On Monday, Biden rolled out his health care plan which, while it does many new-ish things, is best described as Obamacare Plus.
Biden’s plan takes the Affordable Care Act as its foundational principle and builds from there. So there is more money to lower the cost of purchasing insurance — and a public option similar to Medicare for those who want it. But there is not much that’s radical in the Biden proposal, nothing coming anywhere close to the “Medicare for All” proposal, which would eliminate the private insurance industry (and the ACA) in favor of a health care system run entirely by the government, supported by at least two of his main rivals for the 2020 Democratic nod.