Public Option Advocates To Push Medicare For All If Supreme Court Strikes ‘Obamacare’ [View all]

[WilliamPitt]

Public Option Advocates To Push Medicare For All If Supreme Court Strikes ‘Obamacare’
TPM

The progressive activists who put the public option at the heart of the health care reform debate in 2009 and 2010 will return in 2012 to press Democrats to back a single-payer system if the Supreme Court throws out the Affordable Care Act on Thursday.

For progressives, Medicare for all — or a similar approach — was always the ideal way to address the soaring costs and widespread un- and underinsurance that defined the country’s broken health care system. But Democratic leaders believed an approach along the lines of Mitt Romney’s reforms in Massachusetts would stand a better chance of attracting Republican and conservative Democratic support in Congress, and foreclosed on the single-payer model without giving it any legislative consideration.

To keep single-payer supporters in their coalition, though, Democrats pledged to fight for a Medicare-like public option that would allow consumers the opportunity to buy insurance directly from the government. They ultimately abandoned that idea as well.

That’s why the same disappointed activists aren’t sweating Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling. If the health care law fails, they believe it will open up a whole new set of political and substantive opportunities for liberals.

The rest: http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/06/supreme-court-obamacare-single-payer-medicare-for-all-romney.php?ref=fpa