NY Times: Medicare for All won’t happen even if Sanders wins and Democrats take the Senate – By John Sexton (HotAir) / March 9 2020
The NY Times published a news story today which finally says what many observers have noted for months. There is almost zero chance Medicare for All will become law even if Bernie Sanders wins the White House. In fact, even if Democrats win the Senate and change the filibuster rules, that probably wouldn’t matter either.
Just 14 members of the Senate have signed on to his Medicare for All Act, which would require a huge expansion of federal spending, and Democrats would need to pick up four seats in November to gain majority control of the chamber. Even if they succeeded, most of the Democrats seeking to unseat vulnerable Senate Republicans — John Hickenlooper in Colorado, for example, and Mark Kelly in Arizona — have come out against Medicare for all, raising the curious prospect of Democratic Senate candidates opposing the Democratic presidential nominee’s most prized policy plan.
In the House, a similar Medicare for all bill has 119 sponsors, all Democrats, out of a total 435 members — at least 218 votes are needed to pass legislation — and Speaker Nancy Pelosi is not among the supporters. Nor are most of the roughly 40 freshman Democrats known as “front liners,” who helped their party win control of the House in 2018 by flipping Republican seats…
Even if the rules were changed to get rid of the filibuster, making it possible to pass major legislation with only 50 Senate votes, “there is not any guarantee that the 51st Democrat would be willing to support Medicare for all or anything close to it,” said Mark Peterson, a professor of public policy, political science and law at the University of California, Los Angeles.
In sum, there’s almost no chance this is going to happen. And that’s even before you consider the substantial push back that would begin the moment Democrats tried to make this happen.
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