Let’s Break Down Medicare for All's Meteoric Rise
Medicare for All appears to have suffered the same fate as its champion Bernie Sanders, its prospects fading away just as it’s needed most. But it would be a mistake to assume the policy’s defeat. The grassroots movement fighting for M4A has driven it to the center of American political debate in a few short years. Activists are looking to the next fight.
The idea of Medicare for All - government-financed health care, free at the point of use - has been a long time in the making. The Truman administration pushed for a version in the 1940s, but was defeated by an American Medical Association campaign scaremongering about “socialized medicine.” Less than 20 years later, Medicare emerged as a compromise, funding just care for the elderly. Not much changed until the 2009 passage of the Affordable Care Act, an undeniable improvement that still left many Americans uninsured or overwhelmed by medical debt and a formidable bureaucracy.
Sanders’ first insurgent presidential campaign, beginning in 2015, took on health care dysfunction that government had failed to solve for 80 years. When he described the health care system as “designed to maximize profits for big insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry, Wall Street,” his words woke up a new generation of young activists struggling to make ends meet in a hostile economy marked by middling job prospects and heavy debt. Coming to consciousness after the fall of the Berlin Wall, they were less scared of socialized medicine than its capitalist counterpart.
This new progressive energy fueled state-level campaigns during the Trump years led by National Nurses United, Democratic Socialists of America and Physicians for a National Health Program. Republican attempts to smash the ACA convinced these activists that a truly universal program would be safer from sabotage because it would have a large and passionate constituency, including women and people of color, who disproportionately suffer from health care inequities. Today, Medicare for All bills in the House and Senate have racked up dozens of cosponsors. Down-ballot candidates across the country have been running on Medicare for All. The second Sanders campaign ensured that it never left the news.
As Sanders exits the race, the coronavirus pandemic has driven support for Medicare for All to a nine-month high of 55 percent. A lot stands between that support and an M4A victory, but tens of thousands of Sanders volunteers suddenly have a lot of time on their hands.