Bernie Sanders-Style Health Plans Have Reached a Saturation Point

It took Bernie Sanders about a minute and a half into his opening remarks at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees 2020 Public Service Forum to start talking health care. “I want to thank AFSCME for supporting the idea of a Medicare for All single-payer program,” the Vermont senator said to cheers at the Aug. 3 event in Las Vegas. He even threw in an “I wrote the damn bill!” for good measure. Sanders enjoys a home field advantage when he speaks to unions. The AFSCME members in attendance responded with more whoops and cheers when he promised to end so-called right to work legislation, which bans mandatory union contributions for workers covered by collective bargaining agreements, and to appoint the strongest worker advocate he could find as U.S. secretary of labor. Talking later with some members of the crowd, however, it was clear that he’s lost some of his edge on Medicare for All. In 2015, leading up to the next year’s presidential primaries, Sanders was considered radical for pushing universal health care. Four years later, 12 of the top 20 candidates for the Democratic nomination have put forward some variation on the idea. While the AFSCME forum attendees were mostly in favor of Medicare for All, not all of them liked Sanders’s version best.

Janelle Fisher, 36, a licensed psychologist from Sacramento, is enthusiastic about single-payer health care. “Oh goodness, that should be a right,” she said. “Everyone should have access to health care that actually fits their needs and doesn’t leave them saddled with all this debt or having to file bankruptcy.” That said, Sanders’s Medicare for All isn’t her favorite version of it. “To be honest, Kamala Harris’s plan stood out to me,” she said. Fisher thought the California senator’s 10-year rollout was more realistic than Sanders’s four-year timetable. “At the end of the day, Medicare for All is such a huge, gargantuan plan to enact, and it’s not gonna happen overnight. But little by little, it can be something really fantastic.”