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Health care has been the top policy priority of each of the past two Democratic presidents. It should not be so for the next Democratic president.

Why not? Because those past two Democrats made substantial progress on health care, mostly through Obamacare and Bill Clinton’s expansion of children’s health insurance. And because the country has other pressing problems, like climate change, corporate consolidation, the tax code and education. (Education, by the way, also improves public health.)

But even if health care shouldn’t be the first Democratic agenda item of the future, it needs to be somewhere on the agenda. It’s too important, both politically and substantively. Yesterday, Paul Starr, the eminent health scholar, published a persuasive essay, through a joint project of The American Prospect and Century Foundation, about the future of health policy.