No new senators sign onto Bernie Sanders’ expanded Medicare for All Act

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Sen. Bernie Sanders unveiled Wednesday an updated version of his Medicare for All Act that includes expanded healthcare benefits, but he did not pick up additional support from Democrats in the upper chamber.

Fourteen senators have co-sponsored the legislation to enroll everyone living in the U.S. onto a government plan, compared to an unprecedented 16 last year for a proposal that Sanders, a Vermont independent, had gone at alone for years.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., is the one senator no longer listed as a co-sponsor for the Medicare for All Act after signing on last year, and her office did not respond to queries about her stance on the matter. Sanders also has failed to pick up the support of Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., who replaced former co-sponsor Al Franken after he resigned his seat following accusations of sexual misconduct.

Still, the legislation features prominently in political rhetoric because it has the backing of Democratic senators running for president, including Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Kamala Harris of California, and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York. Sanders, too, is seeking the Democratic nomination.

“Together we are going to end the international embarrassment of the United States of America being the only major nation on earth not to guarantee healthcare to all as a right,” Sanders said at a press conference Wednesday.

But unlike Sanders, several of the bill’s supporters back not just the Medicare for All Act but also other measures that would be less extensive while still expanding the government’s role in healthcare.

[Also read: Kellyanne Conway: ‘Medicare for all’ bill is healthcare equivalent of Green New Deal]

“It’s one way to get us to healthcare as a right not a privilege, and it’s just one way,” co-sponsor Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, told the Washington Examiner. “I’m not fixated on any particular way, we just need to expand access.”

The Medicare for All Act unveiled Wednesday goes even further than the previous iteration by adding benefits for long-term care, which would cover people living in nursing homes as well as people with disabilities. The plan would overhaul Medicare’s operation by billing the government for all healthcare services without charging patients. It also would cover more services than Medicare does now, including prescription drugs, dental care, vision care, abortion, and maternity care.

It would enroll everyone in the U.S. into a public plan and disallow private health insurance except for cosmetic surgery.

In the House, 107 representatives have backed the lower chamber’s version of the Medicare for All Act, introduced by Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Calif. Even there, support has fallen off as Democratic leaders steer the party toward expanding Obamacare rather than pursuing a total overhaul of the healthcare system.

The Senate version would transition everyone onto a government plan over four years, rather than the House’s two years. Gillibrand, the only presidential candidate other than Sanders present at the press conference, said that she helped write that portion of the bill.

Healthcare is expected to feature prominently in the 2020 presidential election. Republicans, eager to shift the discussion away from their failed attempts to repeal and replace Obamacare and the Trump administration’s lawsuit to have the law thrown out, have warned that people would lose the private health insurance they get from employers if the Medicare for All bill is enacted. They are dubbing the proposal the “Medicare for None” plan.

The bill hasn’t been scored by the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan scorekeeping agency, to analyze how much it would cost. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has been skeptical about how a fully government-financed healthcare plan would be paid for.

One study by the right-leaning Mercatus Center at George Mason University found that a similar plan would raise government spending by $32.6 trillion over 10 years, an estimate that is in line with an earlier study by the left-leaning Urban Institute.

The figure is less than what the U.S., including both the government and private entities, would spend under the current system by roughly $2 trillion, but it would come through cutting payments that hospitals and other providers were getting from private insurance by 40 percent. That’s largely why the private insurance, hospital, doctor, and pharmaceutical lobbies have united against it and instead supported the approach House Democratic leaders are taking.

Sanders and other supporters of government-financed healthcare say the move is possible because the profit motive that currently exists would be undone.

“The current debate has nothing to do with healthcare; it has everything to do with greed and profiteering,” Sanders said.

Cassidy Morrison contributed to this report.

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