By Abe Sutton
This past Democratic Party presidential primary season highlighted the differences between the health policy approaches championed by Senator Sanders and President Biden.
But, despite short-term distinctions and differences in services covered between Medicare For All’s single payer and a public option built on the Affordable Care Act, I believe that in the long run, these approaches are indistinguishable. This is because a public option would lead to single payer over time.
In this post, I walk through three ways that many public option proposals would pave the way for single payer.