Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced the Medicare for All Act of 2017 today, a universal health care bill that, if passed, would create a public system paid for by taxes.
“Right now, if we want to move away from a dysfunctional, wasteful, bureaucratic system into a rational health care system that guarantees coverage to everyone in a cost-effective way, the only way to do it is Medicare for All,” Sanders told the Washington Post today.
The Medicare for All Act of 2017 would eventually put everyone on government health insurance that would cover the majority of health-related issues, and be paid for by increased taxes. It would replace employer-provided health care, and private insurers would still exist under this plan to cover elective procedures.
“I don’t think it is going anywhere because of the composition of the current Congress and the current president. Not a chance,” Art Caplan, the director of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center, told Boston Public Radio in an interview Wednesday.
For Caplan, though, the bill is not as crazy as conservatives and many Democrats will have people believe.
“I don’t think it is a particularly radical idea, because 95 percent of the developed world has some version of [universal health care],” Caplan said.
Caplan recognizes the success of single-payer health care around the world, but sees America’s capitalist-obsessed culture from prohibiting a bill like the Medicare for All Act of 2017 from being passed.
“Some people are just born with that ideology that the only way to get anything delivered is through the free market, and they don’t care that it has been a 50-year failure since Medicare,” Caplan said.
Click above to listen to the entire interview.
