Why No One Wants Medicare 4 All

I’ve been predicting that medicare for all will happen since Obamacare came in. I predicted that Obamacare would fall apart and that medicare for all would be the obvious solution and that it would be in place by 2018. It’s 2019 and I couldn’t be more wrong. Recently, I wrote about how to make M4A work in practical terms. The problem is that no one is really suggesting something that would be practical.

Harris and Warren Both Bet on M4A

Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie (I wrote the damn bill) Sanders all are proponents of Medicare for All in various forms. Others like Buttigieg and Biden want Medicare-for-all-that-want-it. However, except for Sanders, both Warren and Harris have pulled away from the purest version of Medicare for All. On December 3, Harris ended her presidential run after polling decently over the summer. Part of the reason her polling numbers fell? Her healthcare plan. Warren has been down on polls lately as well and there’s one headline I can point to that shows why: the $20.5 trillion price tag of her health plan. What the headline fails to mention is that Americans will spend those dollars on healthcare anyway, its merely a difference between if the government is going to do the spending or the insurance companies. As for Sanders, his 2020 run is not nearly as great as his 2016 run. In 2016, he was new and novel. In 2020, he’s barely staying in the double digits, despite being one of the few candidates who can beat Trump in any state polled.

Americans Want Choice

One of the things I did not realize about Medicare for All is that 159 million Americans have some kind of private insurance. Many wealthy people self-insure or have very good insurance of their own. This means that for most Americans, they can access healthcare in some form. It might bankrupt them, force them in debt, and cause them to lose their homes, but in their minds, they have a plan and by and large it works. Most people remember the “you can keep your doctor under the affordable care act” quote that came back to haunt Obama for years once Obamacare became law. For many Americans, if someone can’t access healthcare than it seems reasonable that there should be some sort of government plan for that but the desire to be forced off a plan that “works” is something that many Americans are rather cool towards.

How Do We Get Universal Coverage?

Something that I did not take into calculation is the fact that most Americans have doctors and healthcare tied up with their health insurance company. Elizabeth Warren has made the same mistake. In the second debate, she remarked that she had never heard of anyone say that they loved their insurance company. For most people, as long as prescriptions are mostly covered, doctor visits are inexpensive, and they don’t have any major diseases, health insurance works for them and for the end-user, that’s healthcare and there’s nothing wrong with the American healthcare system. Most people don’t realize the true costs of their care and since they have insurance through their employer, they don’t realize that the real premium for that care is double their contribution (if they make any at all). So how do we convince 159 million Americans that a universal government plan would be better for everyone? That remains to be seen. The reality is that the universal plan helps the poor and those that can’t access healthcare through their employer the most and the sad reality is that most people aren’t interested in paying more taxes on ever-more squeezed wages to help people less fortunate than them. Instead, most people reason, they should simply get a better job. Time may be a factor. Universal coverage is very popular in the under 35 set, it may take time to get younger people into power to finally make a change to a universal plan. For the time being, the United States remains the only developed economy without a universal plan for all its citizens and sadly, I don’t think that will change any time soon.

If you want to learn more about our healthcare system from the people that work in it, I can’t recommend this book enough. It’s available here at The Widgery Reading Boutique and you can order it now!