Medicare-for-all (often styled “Medicare for All” or “Medicare for all”) is a proposed policy to create a government-run “single-payer” socialist healthcare system in the United States by expanding the existing Medicare program from covering primarily older individuals to covering all citizens.

While proposals for government-sponsored healthcare date back to the 1910s, the concept of expanding Medicare to universal coverage was first proposed in 1970 by liberal Republican Senator Jacob Javits (R-NY). Medicare-for-all and similar healthcare socialization schemes re-emerged in the mid-2010s when Democratic and left-wing leaders like U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) began to champion the policy. In the 2020 Democratic Presidential primaries, Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) all expressed support for Medicare-for-all, while nearly all other Democratic nominees supported some other form of government healthcare expansion. ¹⁸

While the House bill is broadly similar to the Senate bill, it aims to go into effect in two years rather than four. The House plan would also absorb the Veterans Administration and Indian Health Service gradually. ²³ However, Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight pointed out that according to the Marist Poll, a plan that allows for private competition more closely resembles reforms suggested by Joe Biden (D-DE) is far more popular than Sanders’s Medicare-for-all without private options, which differs in this regard from his proposed Senate bill. Only 41% of voters and 64% of Democrats support Medicare-for-all with no private option, and 81% of Republicans opposed the policy. 0){ let parent=divs[divs.length-1].parentNode; let footer=divs[divs.length-1]; delete divs[divs.length-1]; for (let i=2; i