Biden keeps inching closer to the Bernie Sanders wing of the party without embracing “Medicare for All,” by proposing to lower the eligibility age of the entitlement program from 65 to 60 and potentially extend government coverage to an additional 23 million people. He’s also backing a robust government-run public health insurance option that would auto-enroll low-income people who lose their jobs and provide another choice for Americans covered under Obamacare or at their job.
Those steps to strengthen the social safety net could tamp down the kind of infighting that roiled Democrats in the leadup to 2008 and 2016 elections. But they come as emboldened progressives insist the party embrace “Medicare for All” in its 2020 platform, saying the pandemic and tens of millions of newly unemployed Americans make a strong case for eliminating private health insurance entirely and replacing it with a single-payer system…
“This is health care moonshot time,” said Irwin Redlener, the founding director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University who served on the Biden campaign’s public health task force earlier this year. “My sense is that we’re not going to see a moderate, watered down, gradual series of changes. I expect a huge plan that would forever change how Americans get health care.”
