He is betting the press won’t call him on it.
He is betting the press won’t call him on it.
M edicare for All has a problem. The slogan polls well, but most people don’t realize it eliminates private health insurance (not to mention, in its leading legislative incarnation, eliminating Medicare Advantage plans). And most people would prefer to stay with their existing insurance rather than join the progressives’ new federal program. The left doesn’t want to give them that option. Abdul El-Sayed’s solution to this political problem: Lie about this feature of his plan.
El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for Senate in the Michigan race, was asked during a debate last week whether “families could keep their private health care” under his Medicare for All plan. His answer: “Yes, absolutely. . . . If families want to keep their private health insurance, that’s fine by me.”
No, families could not keep their private health insurance under his plan.
The leading Medicare for All bill — the Bernie Sanders plan, which has 19 declared supporters in the Senate — makes it illegal to enter any contract to get a service covered by the new government-run system. And it covers nearly everything, including dental and vision benefits, which not even the Canadian and U.K. single-payer systems do. There would be almost nothing left for private insurance to cover.
El-Sayed himself co-authored a book on Medicare for All that explains that with it as law, Americans “who have employer-based insurance, Medicaid, or private Medicare Advantage plans” would “transition” into the new system. In case anyone misses the point, two sentences later the authors note that “M4A would not be an opt-in or opt-out program; everyone would be covered.” His campaign website still brags about his co-authorship of the book.
El-Sayed’s communications director reiterated during the primary campaign that he disagreed with opponents who believed participation in any new program should be optional: “Abdul is running on a guaranteed health insurance program, in which ALL are enrolled. Folks can choose to opt in to private insurance above that, but they are automatically enrolled in the public system.”
What could “private insurance above that” possibly mean? Sanders has discussed letting people buy private insurance for cosmetic procedures that Medicare for All did not include — thanks, senator! — but there is no market for such a product. Alternatively, El-Sayed could mean that he would strike the portion of the Medicare for All legislation that prohibits insurance contracts that would duplicate what the new program covers.
But what difference would that make? Nearly everyone would be paying already, through taxes, for the new program. Perhaps a few people would volunteer to pay extra for what El-Sayed’s campaign itself says would be “redundant and unnecessary” private insurance that covers the same services. Is it at all likely that so many people would make this choice that a viable market would exist? Would even those people in the group, then, be able to find an insurer who offered this product?
Under El-Sayed’s health-care plan, scores of millions of people who like or prefer their existing insurance would not be able to keep it. He is lying about this issue and betting the press won’t call him on it.