Supporters of the Affordable Care Act participate in a “Save Obamacare” rally in Los Angeles, California, on March 23, 2017. (Photo: Ronen Tivony / NurPhoto via Getty Images)
This piece is part of Fighting for Our Lives: The Movement for Medicare for All, a Truthout original series.
Progressives have been largely united in 2017 with efforts to stop GOP health reform efforts. Should the Democratic Party win back power, however, the battle over how to proceed with health care reform will likely be a contentious one. At the heart of this debate will be the political and policy merits of the “public option” as opposed to pursuing Medicare for All, or single-payer health care.
The public option, which gained prominence during the Obamacare debates, gives Americans the option of buying into a public plan (often in the form of a buy-in to Medicare) that can compete with private plans. Unlike Medicare for All, the public option would not create universal care nor end the commodification of health care. But many liberals support it as an incremental step in the right direction, and see it as more politically viable than single-payer.
“I support a public option” has become the go-to response for Democrats opposed to single-payer health care.
The parameters of this inevitable struggle were made clearer last week. Centrist Senate Democrats Tim Kaine (Virginia) and Michael Bennett (Colorado) — who declined to co-sponsor Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All legislation — offered their own version of the “public option.” Their bill allows some people over 55 to buy into Medicare, according to The Washington Post, starting in rural areas, and expanding to the rest of the nation over time. The press described it as a “realistic and politically viable” alternative to Sanders’s bill, which was predictably treated as utopian nonsense by the dominant media.
Some liberals responded with great enthusiasm. “The Road to Single-Payer is Being Carved by Two Centrist Democrats,”…