At an Iowa presidential town hall event hosted by CNN this week, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) defended her support for the Medicare for All health care plan Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced last Congress, including the fact that it would eliminate private health insurance.
The next day, her spokesman clarified her position. “Medicare-for-all is the plan that she believes will solve the problem and get all Americans covered. Period. She has co-sponsored other pieces of legislation that she sees as a path to getting us there, but this is the plan she is running on."
Both political reporters and some of Harris’ critics on the left portrayed this clarification as a walkback—as if Harris were waffling on her commitment to Medicare for All. This analysis is wrong, and worse, seeks to impose litmus tests on Democratic candidates that make no sense and that no candidate would pass.
In addition to cosponsoring Sanders’s Medicare for All bill, Harris has cosponsored legislation to establish a public insurance option in state exchanges and a bill that would allow people and large employers to buy into Medicare. The fact that she’d accept those bills as half measures if Congress passes them during her presidency isn’t surprising at all, or even really new.
By the same token, Sanders has supported Medicare for All since forever, but he provided a decisive vote to pass the Affordable Care Act, and he also cosponsored the same public option bill Harris views as a backup plan.
From Brian: The assertion that Harris has “backtracked” and the criticism of her for supposedly backtracking imply Democrats should not only support Bernie’s Medicare for All plan, but should promise to veto any health care reform bills that don’t achieve those goals straight out of the gate. No Democratic candidates hold that view, nor should they. Democrats are engaged in a real and important debate over how to achieve universal, single-payer coverage, particularly about how to transition from the current system to that. This stands in contrast to Republicans (who want to gut the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, and Medicaid), and Howard Schultz (who only wants to gut Medicare), and people should describe that debate accurately, and engage it in good faith.
