The Medicare for All plan backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, for example, would end today's private health insurance market in a period of four years, forcing nearly 180 million Americans off of their existing plans in the process.
After Sen. Kamala Harris, who supports the Sanders plan, said at a presidential town hall Monday night that she favors eliminating all private health insurance, even for people who like their plans, a policy staffer for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, "Yes, we're going to get rid of the entire health insurance industry. That's a feature, not a bug."
She continues to support a plan that would make today's private health insurance plans illegal while forcing most everyone onto a government-run insurance system.
She supports alternatives as well, presumably ideas like creating a government-run insurance plan that would be sold alongside private plans, or allowing more people to buy into the existing Medicare system, or something like it.
In other words, she also supports plans that are not full-fledged single-payer, the entire point of which is to replace all existing insurance with, yes, a single government-run health coverage plan.
What Harris encountered was the obstacle that has bedeviled health care reformers on both the left and the right for decades: Although public satisfaction with the health care system writ large is often fairly low, polls consistently find that a majority of people like their own health insurance plans and doctors, and they recoil from plans that would cause them to lose their existing coverage arrangements.
The incredible unpopularity of any plan that openly proposes to upend current coverage for tens of millions of people is a political barrier no one has managed to overcome.
http://reason.com/blog/2019/01/30/kamala-harris-sanders-medicare-fail
After Sen. Kamala Harris, who supports the Sanders plan, said at a presidential town hall Monday night that she favors eliminating all private health insurance, even for people who like their plans, a policy staffer for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, "Yes, we're going to get rid of the entire health insurance industry. That's a feature, not a bug."
She continues to support a plan that would make today's private health insurance plans illegal while forcing most everyone onto a government-run insurance system.
She supports alternatives as well, presumably ideas like creating a government-run insurance plan that would be sold alongside private plans, or allowing more people to buy into the existing Medicare system, or something like it.
In other words, she also supports plans that are not full-fledged single-payer, the entire point of which is to replace all existing insurance with, yes, a single government-run health coverage plan.
What Harris encountered was the obstacle that has bedeviled health care reformers on both the left and the right for decades: Although public satisfaction with the health care system writ large is often fairly low, polls consistently find that a majority of people like their own health insurance plans and doctors, and they recoil from plans that would cause them to lose their existing coverage arrangements.
The incredible unpopularity of any plan that openly proposes to upend current coverage for tens of millions of people is a political barrier no one has managed to overcome.
http://reason.com/blog/2019/01/30/kamala-harris-sanders-medicare-fail
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