ABC anchor presses Jared Polis on Harris’s ‘Medicare for All’ stance

ABC’s “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl pressed Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) over Vice President Harris’s apparent shift away from “Medicare for All,” to which the governor argued it is “not a one size fits all solution,” for the health care debate.

Speaking with Polis on Sunday, Karl played a series of clips from Harris’s 2020 presidential campaign, during which she pledged support for Medicare for All on numerous occasions before pointing to reporting that her campaign states she is no longer in favor of this policy.

When asked if he had a sense of the reasoning behind the shift or if she needed to explain it, Polis said, “Well, look, as a basic value, should every American have access to health care? Absolutely.”

“Almost every other wealthy country does that. We do it very poorly,” he continued. “In our nation, people overpay for insurance. There’s people that still lack coverage. They don’t get it through work; they make too much to get it through Medicaid. They’re not old enough to get it for Medicare.”

The Colorado governor suggested improving this system involves “taking on the special interest,” which he claimed Harris did as California’s attorney general and during her time in the Senate. This includes taking on the pharmaceutical, hospital and provider industry, he said.

“It’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. I think she understands that Americans want to have their choice of health care but can we do better and save people money on health care?” he said. “Absolutely. And I expect that she’ll be working hard to deliver real results, so that people’s monthly insurance premiums are lower and that the American people are able to afford health care.”

Karl then suggested that Harris, somewhere along the lines, “decided” that eliminating private health insurance and replacing it with Medicare for everybody “was the wrong approach.”

Polis repeated the argument Harris recognizes there is “not a one size fits all solution for health care.”

“This is a very challenging, divisive issue, right?” he said. “It’s not one that lends itself to a one word answer. It’s figuring out, of course first and foremost, how Americans can save money with what they have.”

While Harris backed the Medicare for All bill introduced by progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) at the time, she also lacked an array of moderate alternatives, including a “private option” plan that would transition to Medicare for All by allowing private insurance plans to compete with public plans. 

She came under criticism for the seeming indecision at the time.

Experts told The Hill last month they believe Harris is still a staunch supporter of expanding ObamaCare and making health care more affordable for millions of Americans — something that is likely to be one of the biggest health care fights in Congress in 2025.

It is one of the latest examples of Harris’s shift to the center on various issues in an apparent attempt to shore up moderate support ahead of the November election.

Polis, in an interview with “Fox News Sunday” last week, pushed back on criticism Harris has changed her stance too many times.

“The truth of the matter is, yes, she’s come to the middle. She’s pragmatic, she’s a tough leader, she’s the leader we need for the future,” Polis said last week. “So again, while she may have in the past ran on things, just as President Trump ran on single-payer — supported single-payer health care years ago and has moved away from that — Kamala Harris did support things that she’s now moderated.”