Bernie Sanders’s single-payer plan isn’t a plan at all [View all]

[Beacool]

Sanders' long-awaited health care plan is, by turns, vague and unrealistic.

Hillary Clinton has made a lot of bad arguments about Bernie Sanders's support for single payer. But her best argument was her simplest: with mere weeks to go before the Iowa caucuses, Sanders still hadn't released any details about his plan. And absent a real plan no one could really say what he was proposing, or whether it was a good idea. As Clinton said in an interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, "the devil's in the details when it comes to health care."

On Sunday night, mere hours before the fourth Democratic debate, Sanders tried to head off Clinton's attacks by releasing his plan. Only what he released isn't a plan. It is, to be generous, a gesture towards a future plan.

To be less generous — but perhaps more accurate — this is a document that lets Sanders say he has a plan, but doesn't answer the most important questions about how his plan would work, or what it would mean for most Americans. Sanders is detailed and specific in response to the three main attacks Clinton has launched, but is vague or unrealistic on virtually every other issue. The result is that he answers Clinton's criticisms while raising much more profound questions about his own ideas.

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In the absence of these kinds of specifics, Sanders has offered a puppies-and-rainbows approach to single-payer — he promises his plan will cover everything while costing the average family almost nothing. This is what Republicans fear liberals truly believe: that they can deliver expansive, unlimited benefits to the vast majority of Americans by stacking increasingly implausible, and economically harmful, taxes on the rich. Sanders is proving them right.

http://www.vox.com/2016/1/17/10784528/bernie-sanders-single-payer-health-care