Last week, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., released a “2.0” version of his “Medicare-for-all” plan. The self-proclaimed socialist has long promoted the idea of universal health care, and in his latest version, he has found a way to expand his proposal even more to the left.
With each of the declared Democratic presidential candidates coming out in support of some expanded version of Medicare, one should ask, how much of Medicare is really in these plans? In researching the Sanders plan, one might find that there’s very little Medicare at all – as a matter of fact, as it relates to Medicare, it’s about marketing more than mechanics.
About 20 million Americans have gained coverage under ObamaCare since it was passed in 2010, but nearly 9 percent — 30 million people — still don’t have health insurance.
All Democrats running for president say they want to provide universal health care coverage to Americans. But they have different ideas about how to get there.
Here are the plans they keep talking about on the campaign trail and what they would do.
One feature of the political moment is that ideas that first appeared on the left (tariffs) are gaining support on the populist right. The latest example is a GOP plan in Florida to import prescription drugs from Canada, which is impractical, unsafe and unlikely to reduce prices at the pharmacy.
The Florida Legislature has been moving on a plan pushed by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis that directs the state health agency to set up a prescription drug importation program. Other states like Colorado are pondering similar schemes, and Vermont is well along in setting one up.