Opinion | Kamala Harris Had a Great Health Care Idea in 2019. She Should Embrace It.

From the moment Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, Republicans have sought to paint her as a far-left California liberal. After all, they argue, she supported getting rid of private health insurance in her 2019 presidential campaign.

But Ms. Harris didn’t seek to eliminate private insurance in 2019. The core of her previous campaign’s health plan was an intelligently designed and politically astute “public option” — a more robust version of the Democratic approach embraced that year by Joe Biden (but one he never pursued once he took office). Essentially, Ms. Harris wanted to encourage Americans to buy into a revamped Medicare program that would give people the choice of public or private coverage.

As the so-called father of the public option, I feel confident in saying that Ms. Harris’s 2019 plan for a public option was — and remains — the strongest ever put forth by a presidential candidate. She shouldn’t run away from it. She should embrace it as a central part of her 2024 campaign, both because it is smart policy and because it is smart politics.

Health care is “unbelievably complex,” as former President Donald Trump remarked in 2017, as his party’s drive to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act headed for defeat. Americans hate a lot about the current semi-system — its high prices, its insecure coverage, its rapacious financial practices (and, until 2017, they still seemed fairly ambivalent about the A.C.A., too).

The G.O.P.’s repeal rout made clear that a majority of Americans don’t want to go back to a time before the Affordable Care Act. It also reinvigorated the Democratic Party. No issue has unified the party or dominated its messaging like health care. It’s where abortion, child and maternal health, the rural health crisis, paid medical and family leave, the health risks of climate change, the continuing threat of Covid and the economic security of working families all come together.

Still, the party does not quite agree on what the big health care policy goal should be. Progressives advocate a universal Medicare program financed by higher taxes, which is to say Medicare for all. Moderates call for upgrading the A.C.A. by adding a public option (which was stripped from the original legislation before its passage in 2010).