Democrats across the country are running on three simple words, recognizable to every American: Medicare for all.
“There’s no more popular brand in American politics than Medicare,” says Adam Green, co-founder of the lefty Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC). “Our hope is that Democrats wrap themselves in the flag of Medicare in 2018.”
In Democratic primaries around the country, Medicare-for-all candidates are winning — from Kara Eastman in Nebraska to Katie Porter in Orange County, California, to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the Bronx, the message is resonating.
“The system we have, the status quo is not acceptable,” Porter told me when I covered her primary race in May. “We’re questioning whether we can rely on major players, like health insurance companies, to continue to be reliable partners in delivering health care.”
Even before these candidates started winning, polling was showing that Medicare-for-all is really popular: 62 percent of Americans liked the sound of it in last November. Almost every single rumored 2020 candidate in the Senate has backed Sen. Bernie Sanders’s Medicare-for-all bill. It’s clear the idea is in ascendancy among Democrats.
– Vox