First, do no harm: Obamacare must be strengthened, not sabotaged as Republicans are attempting

A pandemic and economic cataclysm that have rendered 32 million Americans jobless and more than 5 million newly uninsured at the worst imaginable moment are screaming arguments for a health-care system that makes medical care less and less contingent on employment.

Yet in Washington, as Democrats sanely seek to strengthen the Affordable Care Act by bolstering subsidies, Republicans barrel ahead with the only real health-care agenda Donald Trump has: a promise to dismantle Obamacare (including urging the Supreme Court to declare it unconstitutional), and thereby make coverage increasingly unavailable to the jobless and those with preexisting conditions.

The contrast couldn’t be more stark, and one that Joe Biden must hammer at every available opportunity.

The ACA was far from a magic tonic. It did too little to rein in escalating costs. Its penalty on those who opted out of insurance proved ineffective. Employers had too little flexibility on birth control mandates, a problem the Supreme Court has since corrected.

But the core framework of the law made and still make sense: a guarantee that those with preexisting conditions will not be barred from buying plans; expanded Medicare; a strong nudge for healthy young people to sign up; and a more affordable marketplace offering a range of plans to self-employed or unemployed people.

Trump and Republicans say that it’s them and not Democrats who will protect Americans with preexisting conditions, a claim that is clinically, comically false. Democrats want to fix the ACA’s shortcomings without turning away from its potential; Republicans offer only a euthanizing needle.

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