Collective Conscious

Here’s why (The New Repub­lic):

The Medicare buy-​​in now under con­sid­er­a­tion is a nice idea, but it’s not a pub­lic option. Or is it? Yes­ter­day on MSNBC Count­down, Ezra Klein made an impor­tant point. If pre­mi­ums for the Medicare buy-​​in are competitive–and they should be, I think, if it’s done right–then a 56-​​year-​​old select­ing that option is going to see, right away, what a good deal it is. That’s going to have pre­cisely the effect that pub­lic option pro­po­nents always wanted, both on pop­u­lar per­cep­tions of pub­lic ver­sus pri­vate insur­ance and, in the aggre­gate, on the mar­ket for insurance.

I still sup­port Medicare for all, but never thought it had a hope of pass­ing — despite Repub­li­can love for the mas­sive gov­ern­ment pro­gram, they didn’t want to share it due to its costs. Now, it might carry the day, and I would be ecsta­tic with that development.

The best part?

Medicare Expan­sion builds around an effi­cient and well-​​established one payer system.

Boo-​​yah to sin­gle payer-​​haters.