A Massive Shift In Health Care Politics
As both parties are legislating criticism of socialism, Americans’ support for Medicare For All has intensified to the point where the old attacks may no longer work.
When Medicare For All took center stage in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, opponents undercut growing support for the initiative by honing in on how it would raise taxes and eliminate health insurers.
Those opponents succeeded: Polls at the time showed that while Americans conceptually supported the idea of a government-sponsored system, many didn’t want it to replace private insurance. Surveys showed support for Medicare For All dropped precipitously if the program would eliminate private insurance.
Soon after, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Medicare for All proponent, badly stumbled over the tax and private insurance question and lost her frontrunner status in the presidential primary polls. With party acolytes still valorizing the Affordable Care Act rather than pressing for something better, Democratic voters then nominated avowed Medicare For All opponent Joe Biden, who got elected promising a public health insurance option, and then literally never mentioned it again upon taking office.
That might have been the end of Medicare For All for another generation - except now the ACA is epically and undeniably failing to guarantee “affordable” health care. As private health insurers are now jacking up premiums for tens of millions of Americans, a new poll shows a huge majority of Americans now want Medicare For All – even if it entails eliminating private insurers and raising taxes.
In the Data For Progress survey, 63 percent of Americans said they support Medicare for All even knowing that it “would eliminate most private insurance plans and replace premiums with higher taxes.” That support is across the political spectrum - 78 percent support from Democrats, 64 percent support from independents, and 47 percent (a plurality) of support from Republicans. In all, just 29 percent of voters were opposed.
To put the enormity of this change in perspective, consider that 7 years ago, polls showed that when people were told Medicare For All might eliminate private insurance, topline support for the idea typically dropped. Surveys showed anywhere from 37 percent to just 13 percent of Americans said they supported Medicare For All if it involved eliminating private insurance. So these new numbers are a shift of anywhere from 26 to 50 points on that key question in just 7 years.
As Bernie Sanders might say, that’s yuge. It’s also understandable: To many voters facing ever-higher bills,“eliminate private insurance” now sounds like “eliminate the faceless corporation burying me in paperwork, reducing my coverage, and raising my premiums.”
Of course, when looking at this new polling data, big caveats apply. Comparing different polls with different methodologies are not perfect apples-to-apples poll comparisons. More importantly, these new poll numbers come amid some momentary political asymmetry.
Americans are rightly changing and intensifying their views in response to health care price shocks. But that’s before there’s a Medicare For All bill moving ahead in Congress - which is to say, before the insurance industry has financed another multimillion-dollar ad campaign aiming to scare everyone about the prospect of “death panels” and other bogeymen if the government dares extend to everyone what the country already provides to seniors.
Would Medicare For All fare better in the 2028 Democratic primaries and have a real chance of passing with a new administration in 2029? It’s hard to say.
On the one hand, it’s fair to expect that insurance-bankrolled Democrats’ use of the ACA as a weapon against Medicare For All will have somewhat less efficacy these days when everyone is experiencing the downsides of the ACA’s foundational decision to fortify - rather than eliminate - the power of private insurers. The ACA’s loss of political potency seems to be recognized even by the namesake of Obamacare, who previously abandoned his support for Medicare For All and marginalized the idea while he was president, but who has now shifted his rhetoric.
On the other hand, this is the world of the Master Plan that has deregulated the campaign finance system and legalized bribery. So you can never underestimate the power of money to buy elections, buy legislation, and buy a massive propaganda campaign to sow doubt among voters. You can already see that in miniature right now: even as support for Medicare For All now surges, Republican lawmakers and Democratic leaders in Congress are already busying themselves with passing legislation demonizing “the horrors of socialism.”
That vanity bill may look like merely an attack on New York mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani - but amid a health care crisis, it’s also undoubtedly a callback to Ronald Reagan’s infamous red-baiting attempt to block Medicare itself from ever being created.
Like Reagan back in 1961, today’s politicians and their paymasters see the shift in health care politics. But rather than doing their jobs and solving the actual crisis that’s medically looting and bankrupting millions of Americans, they are instead focused on trying to preemptively distort the political discourse so that change isn’t possible.
If past performance predicts future results, then they’ll succeed. But this time around, may be different – the health care emergency is now so dire that the past may be less predictive and more prelude to a very big set of long-overdue changes.
The trick for Medicare for All advocates in the 2028 Democratic primaries is to move aggressively and define the debate. When the corporate Democrats scream socialism, remind voters that these candidates are bankrolled by the health care industry. Name names and provide amounts. This is a war, and it has to be fought like one.
Please continue exposing how traditional Medicare is SO much less expensive than Medicare Advantage and the ACA, and how traditional Medicare patients and taxpayers are forced to subsidize the profiteering of the Medicare Advantage ecosystem.