What if Medicare for All were the Public/Private Compromise Position?

“National Health Service” — British System

As the American health insurance industry straps “public option” to Democratic candidates to torpedo Bernie Sanders and his growing movement for Medicare for All  (The Nation: The ‘Public Option’ on Health Care Is a Poison Pill), it makes me wonder.  Perhaps most Americans, including insiders, do not know that Medicare for All is already a compromise position worldwide; it is already the “reasonable public private option.”  Perhaps strategically we should push for government owned and operated health care, like the British system, rather than government insurance with private health care, which is what Canada has, and what Medicare for All would be.

Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham in British NHS scary looking government hospital, huh?

Few people know that Canadian-Style National Health Insurance (which essentially is Medicare for All) was a political compromise proposed by the conservative party in order to forestall British-style, government run health insurance.  In Britain, hospitals and health clinics are operated by the British Health Service.  Physicians are public employees who work for the government.  Except for certain speciality services, there is no private health industry.  This is extremely cost effective simple and straightforward and works well as long as there is the political will to fund it fully.  After it was up and running in Britain the liberal party pushed for it in Canada.  The conservative party pushed through the compromise position, government run insurance, with private hospitals and physicians.  

For decades Medicare for All has been enormously popular with average Americans and dead on arrival in Congress, which does the bidding of the insurance industry and the medical financial complex.  Now that there’s a viable presidential candidate with a vast and growing movement behind him pushing for Medicare for All, the industry has been busily grooming his opponents to chant “public option” whenever the subject comes up, as they no doubt will in tonight’s Democratic candidate debate.    

Politics is always about compromise and the art of the possible.  For every Bernie Sanders or AOC there is going to be a Joe Biden or Pete Buttigieg that wants us to be “reasonable” and go slower.  It’s just the way it works.  Government operated health care has a lot to offer.  It saves much more money over government operated insurance.  Let’s campaign for British-style Government operated health care here and let Bernie Sanders offer up the reasonable compromise position of Medicare for All, government operated insurance.  Up for it?