When Senator Claire McCaskill attacked Bernie Sanders several weeks ago on MSNBC's Morning Joe, one of her points was that the United States does not support Medicare-for-all. In a similar vein to that awkward interview, Politico was out this week with a Bernie hit piece -- "The socialist surge" -- that also cited Medicare-for-all (or single-payer, as Medicare is a single-payer program for those 65 and older) as evidence of Bernie's being too socialist, too darn radical for the general public.
The thing is, though, that single-payer, Medicare-for-all is not socialism. (The English and Italian National Health Services are socialized medicine. Veterans Affairs hospitals are socialized medicine. Single-payer is just government efficiently paying bills from private doctors and hospitals.) It's not radical. It's a wildly popular concept supported by the majority of Americans.
So, perhaps it should come as no surprise that this policy is supported by American leaders across the political spectrum and across the public, private and non-profit sectors. It's even supported by huge jerks, like Donald Trump. BuzzFeed has put together a nice summary of the Donald's support for true universal health care. In 2000, he told Larry King about his views on health care.
TRUMP: I think you have to have it, and, again, I said I’m conservative, generally speaking, I’m conservative, and even very conservative. But I’m quite liberal and getting much more liberal on health care and other things. I really say: What’s the purpose of a country if you’re not going to have defensive and health care?And, the same year, he published an explicit endorsement of single-payer in a not-super-popular book called The America We Deserve. BuzzFeed provides an excerpt.If you can’t take care of your sick in the country, forget it, it’s all over. I mean, it’s no good. So I’m very liberal when it comes to health care. I believe in universal health care. I believe in whatever it takes to make people well and better.
KING: So you believe, then, it’s an entitlement of birth?
TRUMP: I think it is. It’s an entitlement to this country, and too bad the world can’t be, you know, in this country. But the fact is, it’s an entitlement to this country if we’re going to have a great country.
We need, as a nation, to reexamine the single-payer plan, as many individual states are doing.(Donald Trump also once -- very recently -- even told David Letterman how immensely impressed he was by the Scottish National Health Service. There's video here.)What would universal care look like? Nebraska senator Kerrey and others have advocated a version of the Canadian-style, single-payer system in which all payments for medical care are made to a single agency (as opposed to the large number of HMOs and insurance companies, with their diverse rules, claim forms, and déductibles ).
A recent study done by the Massachusetts Medical Society says that in Massachusetts the single-payer plan would save $ 5 billion or about one-seventh of the overhead spent on medical care. Administrative costs across America make up 25 percent of the healthcare dollar, which is two-and-a-half times the cost of healthcare administration in Canada. Doctors might be paid less than they are now, as is the case in Canada, but they would be able to treat more patients because of the reduction in their paperwork.
But, it's not just xenophobic assholes who support single-payer, Ross Perot also floated the idea of Medicare-for-all when he ran for office.
So, why am I giving Trump the dignity of having his thoughts shared in this diary?
Because I want to impress again -- and again and again and again -- that single-payer Medicare-for-all is not a "radical" or "socialist" policy. Hardly.
Instead, it's a policy preferred by those who, well, like good -- and efficient -- health care policy. Single-payer wins from a moral standpoint (health care as a right), but also from an efficiency standpoint.
I write this diary as a Bernie Sanders supporter and as a single-payer supporter. My point here is certainly not to celebrate Donald Trump -- or praise him for this belief, which he only tangentially referred to in his recent campaign announcement, when he said he would -- after criticizing high-deductible health insurance plans -- repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with a cheaper system that covers everyone.
Instead, I submit this diary to our community as a nice piece of evidence -- and I accept that it's awkward for this evidence to come from Donald Trump -- that single-payer Medicare-for-all is a mainstream policy with widespread appeal. (Republicans -- when they actually need to access health care -- end up hating their private health insurance companies, too!)
So, for what it's worth, here's more evidence that single-payer has widespread appeal and that Bernie would be very electable arguing for single-payer as a replacement for the Affordable Care Act.
Bernie recently told the following to the Des Moines Register in a Q&A.
What we need is a cost-effective, well-run government. In many respects we don’t have it today.Americans across the political spectrum want efficiency in government; they want competence in government. Salon recently published a good article -- in defense of Bernie's campaign -- on how both the Left and the Right (even the Tea Party Right) have some middle-ground when it comes to combatting public corruption.
And folks -- from very diverse backgrounds -- recognize that single-payer health care -- a core policy plank of Bernie's campaign -- is essential to achieving that good governance. When health care accounts for about 20 percent of your entire economy -- your entire GDP -- health care is a source of corruption and corporate control of government. Ending corruption in American government -- making government work for the people -- will necessarily require dealing with health care's unnecessarily outsized role in our economy and politics. This is exactly why any candidate who claims to be for "getting money out of politics," ending corruption or combatting inequity must support single-payer.