The coronavirus pandemic and the economic devastation it’s unleashed are pushing Joe Biden and the Democratic Party further to the left on health care. But it may not be far enough for some progressives
Biden has maintained his opposition to Medicare for All from the primaries and criticized the plan as too costly and unrealistic at a press conference Tuesday. And the Democratic National Committee’s platform committee on Monday all but ruled out formally endorsing the system in the party’s 2020 plank in a lopsided 36-125 vote.
Biden’s positions mark a noticeable shift from before the pandemic, when the discussion was centered more on containing health costs than expanding coverage. President Donald Trump’s budgets, for example, proposed cutting billions of dollars from Medicare, despite his campaign pledge to leave the program alone. Biden’s policies are also notably more ambitious than the Democratic-controlled House, where there has not been a vote on the public option, much less Medicare for All.
The pandemic accelerated an overdue discussion about the precarious nature of a health care system centered on private coverage tied to work and the need for more government intervention, according to more than a dozen Biden health care advisors, task force members and DNC platform committee members who spoke to POLITICO.
“We didn’t get everything we want. We didn’t turn Biden into Bernie Sanders, but we were able to make enormous progress,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal , lead author of the House Medicare for All bill. “In our primary, we had a debate around two bold visions, and one won over the other,” he said. “But relative to current law, they’re both very bold.”
The Trump campaign has already sought to paint Biden as a puppet of the left, and the health care industry throughout the primary ran ads slamming the public option as the first step on the path toward single-payer health care.
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