Michigan Senate Hopeful Puts Medicare for All at Center of His Campaign

Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Michigan, is making Medicare for All the centerpiece of his campaign, according to The Guardian. He is doing so as a federal law enacted by Republicans is expected to push 17 million people off their health insurance plans, and as interest in single-payer coverage appears to be growing among Democrats.

The Guardian reported that El-Sayed started a recent day on the trail in Escanaba, in Michigan's rural Upper Peninsula, a region where Donald Trump won some districts by more than 41%. Hundreds of people on the political left filled a county fairgrounds hall to hear him speak alongside Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a longtime Medicare for All supporter.

How El-Sayed is pitching the idea

El-Sayed told the crowd his campaign rests on three things: getting money out of politics, putting money in people's pockets and Medicare for All. He led the audience in a call-and-response of the three themes. He ran both the Detroit and Wayne County health departments and holds a medical degree from Columbia University, The Guardian reported.

He talked about shortages of doctors and mental health care, drawing shouts from the crowd that included a call about dental care. His campaign slogan, he said, is that care “shouldn't be this hard.”

El-Sayed is not alone. According to The Guardian, Troy Jackson, the Democratic Senate candidate in Maine, called Medicare for All “great coverage.” Angie Nixon, the Democratic Senate candidate in Florida, has made it part of her working families guarantee. Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland added it to his platform last December.

What Medicare for All would do

Proposals before Congress would turn the federal government into the nation's health insurer, creating what is known as a single-payer system. The Guardian described this as closer to the systems in peer democracies such as Canada.

The article noted that one in every five dollars in the U.S. goes to health care, and that the current patchwork of insurance supports the profits of large corporations and powerful local monopolies. It said Democrats also worry that replacing private insurance would give Republicans an opening to stoke resentment of government. Centrist Democrats, it reported, see the idea as one that has been tried and has failed over decades.

Why it matters for patients and voters

The Guardian reported that the Republican-led law is the largest federal health care cut in the nation's history, taking $1 trillion from the system, mainly through cuts to Medicaid, the federal-state insurance program for low-income and disabled people. The cuts are expected to close hospitals, particularly in rural places like Escanaba and in urban cores, according to the report.

Public opinion may be shifting too. An October poll by the health policy think tank KFF, as the Kaiser Family Foundation is also known, found that two-thirds of Americans support Medicare for All, The Guardian said. The report also pointed out that almost half of U.S. health care is already paid for by federal, state or local government, according to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Dr. Stephanie Woolhandler, a professor of public health at the City University of New York and a decades-long advocate, told The Guardian that support for single-payer goes through dips and peaks but always returns. She argued that this is because the health care system has not been fixed and may not be fixable without single-payer.

How employer-linked insurance began

The Guardian traced the current system back about a century. In 1929, Baylor University hospital offered coverage for hospital bills at $6 per year to a group of 1,500 schoolteachers in Dallas, and the idea spread nationwide, leading to Blue Cross. During World War II, amid government price controls, health insurance became one of the few ways businesses could compete for workers, and the federal government made the benefit tax-exempt, as it remains today, according to historian Paul Starr.

Democrats have pushed for reform since then. In 1965, Democrat Lyndon Johnson passed Medicare for people older than 65, along with Medicaid. Together they provide insurance to more than one-third of Americans today, The Guardian reported.

The same report said some of the most popular recent health policies, such as limits on medical debt collection, grew out of the policy work of Medicare for All advocates.

Around Prague, based on reporting by The Guardian