The newly-proposed Medicare Extra for All plan has sparked on-going controversy in the healthcare advocacy community. Single payer supporters see the plan as incremental, a co-optation, and glorified public option that unacceptably leaves corporate health insurance in the game.  Other commentators have more nuanced opinions, agreeing the plan has inadequately addressed affordability yet acknowledging that the proposed transition plan – while protracted – is designed to bring everybody into the system over time.

 

New Proposal Designed to Confuse Public and Prevent Medicare for All

By Margaret Flowers, HealthOverProfit.org

The Center for American Progress (CAP), a Washington-based Democratic Party think tank funded by Wall Street, including private health insurers and their lobbying group, unveiled a new healthcare proposal designed to confuse supporters of Medicare for All and protect private health insurance profits. It is receiving widespread coverage in ‘progressive’ media outlets. We must be aware of what is happening so that we are not fooled into another ‘public option’ dead end.*

The fact that CAP is using Medicare for All language is both a blessing and a curse. It means Medicare for All is so popular that they feel a need to co-opt it, and it means that they are trying to co-opt it, which will give Democrats an opportunity to use it to confuse people.

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If we look at the phases of stage six of successful social movements by Bill Moyer (see slide 8), we see that as a movement nears victory, the power holders appear to get in line with the public’s solution while actually attacking it. If the movement recognizes what is happening, that this is a false solution and not what the movement is demanding, then we have a chance to win NIMA. If the movement falls for the false solution, it loses.

 

THE PROS AND CONS OF ‘MEDICARE EXTRA FOR ALL’ PLAN FROM CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS

By Jon Walker, ShadowProof

The fact that the Center for American Progress (CAP) has moved dramatically leftward on health care is by far the most important aspect of their recently unveiled Medicare Extra for All plan. It signals a major political and cultural shift.

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Eligibility

PRO: The plan calls for eventually making every legal resident automatically eligible for Medicare Extra and automatically enrolls everyone who doesn’t have other coverage. This should be a bare-minimum for any plan on the left. Automatic enrollment is basically the only way to get to true “universality.”

Benefits

PRO: The plan calls for a full range of health benefits including dental, vision, and hearing.

CON: Both the premium/tax rate as well as the cost sharing in the plan are simply too high. I could not call this plan “affordable,” and that is the biggest con of the entire plan.

 

Some Democratic Establishment Wonks Put Out a Medicare-for-All Plan. And It’s Pretty Good!

By Jordan Weissman. Slate.

At this point, it’s fairly clear that any Democrat who wants to run for president in 2020 with support from the party’s progressive base will have to campaign on some sort of plan that they can plausibly call Medicare-for-All.

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But many Democrats are still clearly concerned that such a rapid move to true, Canadian-style single-payer would risk a backlash from voters, who’d face new taxes and be forced to give up their employer-based coverage, whether or not they wanted to. Those Democrats, which include a big chunk of the party’s wonk class, are still looking for their own answer to Berniecare.

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Like some of the other ambitious health plans Democrats have floated lately, Medicare Extra looks a lot like a bulked up version of the public option—the government run insurance plan that progressives tried and failed to pass as part of Obamacare. The new program would essentially roll together Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program into a single system with more generous benefits that all Americans would be eligible to join, with most families having to pay at least some premiums. But traditional Medicare would be left in place for change-averse seniors who want to stick with what they know, and businesses would be allowed to continue offering their employees private coverage as a benefit.

— Featured Image above: By Capture Queen (Whatever you think) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons —