A prominent health care activist called out South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s “Medicare for All who want it” plan, arguing it merely preserves the status quo for the health care industry.
“It preserves the status quo to a large extent. It keeps the insurance industry fully in charge of our health care system, and that is why we’re having this debate in the first place,” Wendell Potter, a former health care executive who now serves as president of Medicare for All Now, said on Hill.TV’s “Rising” Thursday.
“Pete’s plan would thrill them because it lets them keep doing the things that they’ve been doing and making profits off of all of us,” he added of the former South Bend, Ind. mayor’s plan.
Health care has emerged as one of the chief fissures in the Democratic primary field, with the candidates battling over how far to expand coverage for Americans.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the leading progressive in the field, has proposed a “Medicare for All” plan that would scrap private insurance and introduce a single-payer system.
Centrists like Buttigieg have instead introduced plans to expand the Affordable Care Act and include a Medicare option for those who want it.
Moderates have slammed Sanders’ plan as too expensive, though Sanders has said his proposal would offset costs already besetting families, such as high premiums.
hilltv copyright