Where Bernie Sanders’ Health Care Crusade Might Go From Here

Bernie Sanders can make a real difference in the causes he’s championed, even if he doesn’t become president.

That’s particularly true for one of his signature issues: health care. No matter what happens with the Democratic presidential nomination, the Vermont senator can keep pushing to to fill in the holes of Obamacare, while creating the building blocks for the single-payer system he has advocated for his entire political career.

Health care has featured heavily in Sanders’ campaign. He’d scrap existing insurance arrangements and put in their place a new, universal insurance program that the federal government would administer. It’d be similar to “Medicare for all,” as Sanders likes to say, although the coverage would actually be considerably more generous than what even today’s seniors get. On paper, it would all but eliminate the private health insurance industry.

Versions of single payer exist in countries such as Canada, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom. Others countries, like France, provide insurance through quasi-independent organizations but operate more or less like single-payer systems. Progressives have long dreamed of creating such a system in the U.S., and it’s not hard to see why.

More, with video: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-single-payer_us_571a7af4e4b0d4d3f723504e?utm_hp_ref=politicsrmany.