Universal healthcare in America? Not a taboo now, thanks to Bernie Sanders

Thursday 14 September 2017 06.00 EDT


Excerpts:

Sanders is an unusual politician because he’s been willing to lead on an issue before its broad popularity was established. For decades, he has roamed the political wilderness crying out for European or Canadian-style single-payer healthcare. He has done it through Democratic and Republican administrations, no matter the electorate’s political orientation at any given time. It is something he believes in. But most politicians, as gay marriage proved, have few firmly held convictions beyond what they assume the public expects of them. If the people seem to cry out for war, we go to Iraq. If enough people say marriage is between a man and a woman, it stays that way. Few politicians are willing defy conventional wisdom. Politics is a game of self-preservation. Polls determine values.

The movement towards single-payer is humane and sensible. It is also a reflection of the changing zeitgeist and the power of the Sanders movement, which represents the future of the party. As the nation’s most well-liked politician and the hero of millennials, he is now the ringmaster.

There is an argument, valid in its own way, that the safer approach is to just repair Obamacare. Offer a public option to compete with private insurers. Increase subsidies. Watch premiums fall, insurance companies cry. Yet a party so moribund as the Democrats needs a worthwhile goal, and single-payer is it. There should be others, like a massive jobs program to halt the erosion of stable work that automation and globalization is killing for good.

In the meantime, freeing healthcare from the clutches of predatory insurance companies is what all Democrats should be thinking about. Better to have Democratic groupthink about guaranteeing healthcare than going to war or keeping people from getting married.


https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/14/universal-healthcare-america-bernie-sanders