More than 2,000 doctors join call for single-payer healthcare

More than 2,000 doctors on Thursday signed onto a single-payer healthcare plan released by an advocacy group. 

{mosads}The proposal was put forward by the group Physicians for a National Health Program, which advocates for a system in which the government provides coverage for everyone.  

The issue has been brought back to the forefront of the political debate by Bernie Sanders, who has advocated for such a system as part of his presidential campaign. 

The doctors backing the plan, like Sanders, say that ObamaCare has not gone far enough because millions remain uninsured. 

“Despite the passage of the Affordable Care Act six years ago, 30 million Americans remain uninsured, an even greater number are underinsured, financial barriers to care like co-pays and deductibles are rising, bureaucracy is growing, provider networks are narrowing, and medical costs are continuing to climb,” said Dr. Adam Gaffney, who co-chaired the working group that created the proposal. 

The plan calls for progressive taxes to fund the program, as well as administrative savings from shifting away from an array of private insurance companies, but it does not get into the details on the numbers. 

Those details are an important part of the debate. Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton and many liberal health experts have argued that the numbers don’t add up on Sanders’s plan and that steep new taxes would be needed to pay for it. 

Backers of single-payer systems argue that the taxes could be offset by people not having to pay premiums and deductibles anymore.