‘The Realistic, Humane, and Just Choice’: Sanders Unveils Medicare for All Act of 2022

Slamming the current U.S. healthcare system as a morass of waste, dysfunction, and profiteering, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday introduced Medicare for All legislation that would eliminate out-of-pocket insurance costs and provide comprehensive coverage to everyone in the country.

“It is not acceptable to me, nor to the American people, that over 70 million people today are either uninsured or underinsured,” Sanders (I-Vt.), chair of the Senate Budget Committee, said during a Medicare for All hearing that he convened Thursday morning.

The Medicare for All Act of 2022, which Sanders unveiled with 15 Senate co-sponsors, would transition the U.S. to a single-payer healthcare system over a period of four years, during which the Medicare eligibility age would be incrementally lowered from 65, benefits would be strengthened and expanded, and the program would be made available to children.

“If Medicare for All becomes law, your taxes will go up,” Sanders noted, anticipating insurance industry talking points against his bill. “But what they won’t tell you is that there would be no out-of-pocket costs.”

“And what they certainly won’t tell you,” Sanders added, “is that Medicare for All will save the average family thousands of dollars a year. In fact, a study by RAND found that moving to a Medicare for All system would save a family with an income of less than $185,000 about $3,000 a year, on average.”

When mass layoffs hit during the initial spread of Covid-19 in the U.S. in 2020, millions lost their jobs and their health insurance, leaving them one illness or accident away from financial ruin. An analysis released last March by Families USA estimated that roughly one in every three coronavirus deaths in the U.S. up to that point were linked to gaps in insurance coverage.

Meanwhile, top U.S. health insurance and pharmaceutical companies raked in massive profits in 2021.

Sanders emphasized Thursday that in addition to saving lives and cutting costs for individuals and families, his Medicare for All legislation would also be “significantly less expensive” overall than the largely privatized status quo “because it would eliminate an enormous amount of the bureaucracy, profiteering, administrative costs, and misplaced priorities inherent in our current for-profit system.”

Despite surveys showing that Medicare for All is popular with the public, the bill faces huge obstacles to passage in the Senate and House.

In the lower chamber, more than half of the House Democratic caucus supports Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Debbie Dingell’s (D-Mich.) Medicare for All Act, but the party’s leadership has refused to allow a vote on the measure.

The path to passage is even more treacherous in the Senate, where the majority of the Democratic caucus has not signed onto Sanders’ legislation. Late last year, conservative Democrats in the upper chamber tanked the Sanders-led effort to expand Medicare’s benefits to include hearing, dental, and vision.

While the near-term prospects of enacting Medicare for All legislation are slim, Robert Weissman, president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, asserts that it’s truly unrealistic “for the United States to continue with for-profit insurance.”

“Medicare for All is not just realistic policy; it’s realistic politics,” he continued. “It’s not just that strong majorities consistently support Medicare for All in polling. We’re seeing a growing grassroots movement with new intensity: Nearly 100 resolutions from cities and towns all across the country have called for Medicare for All.”

Originally published at Commondreams.org, written by Jake Johnson.