Bernie Sanders set to unveil new 'Medicare-for-all' legislation
WASHINGTON - Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is poised Wednesday to release a new version of his "Medicare-for-all" plan, putting a spotlight on the debate among 2020 Democratic presidential contenders over the future of America's health care system.
Sanders plans an event on Capitol Hill to unveil his latest version of a single-payer plan, which would replace the current patchwork of public and private insurers with a government-run system that Sanders argues would ultimately save consumers money.
"Yes, we should essentially eliminate private health insurance," Sanders told The Washington Post recently. "Private insurance as it exists today is nothing more than a confusing morass designed to make people jump through hoops before they can actually get the care they need."
Republicans and some prominent Democrats have sought to cast "Medicare-for-all" plans as astronomically costly - some studies have suggested they could increase government spending on health care by more than $25 trillion over a decade. The critics also portray the plans as incredibly complicated to implement, given the vast array of doctors, hospitals and insurers that would be affected.
Sanders has acknowledged that citizens could pay more in taxes, but he argues that they would ultimately save thousands of dollars a year on out-of-pocket health care costs. For most families, the higher taxes would be more than offset by what they would save on private premiums and deductibles, Sanders says.
He also argues that his program would curtail overall health care spending in the United States because the traditional Medicare program spends only 2 percent of its costs on administration, far less than private health insurance companies.
"What's expensive and what's unsustainable is the current health care system," Sanders said during an interview aired by CBS News on Wednesday. "We are spending twice as much per capita as any other nation."
Wednesday's event will also underscore how much headway Sanders has made among Democrats in pushing what was viewed as a fringe idea during his last presidential bid.
The party's eventual 2016 nominee, Hillary Clinton, dismissed Sanders's vision as impractical, given how difficult it was to pass President Barack Obama's less ambitious Affordable Care Act in 2010.
This cycle, at least 10 other Democratic presidential hopefuls support some version of a single-payer plan, and four of Sanders's Senate colleagues eyeing the White House - Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Kamala Harris of California and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts - have signed on to the bill that he is introducing in the chamber.
Some other Democratic contenders, including Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, have criticized Sanders's measure as politically infeasible. Hickenlooper has said that Medicare-for-all should not be "a litmus test of what it takes to be a good Democrat."
On Capitol Hill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is among those who have voiced skepticism about moving to a single-payer system. For now, Democratic leaders have been more focused preserving the Affordable Care Act amid the Trump administration's attempts to dismantle it.