In his column on Monday, the New York Times' Paul Krugman argued that Hillary Clinton is in the right, and Bernie Sanders much less so, when it comes to correcting the perceived failures of Obamacare.
The question is whether progressives "should re-litigate their own biggest political success in almost half a century," and Krugman firmly believes they should do nothing of the sort. Switching to a single-payer system at this point would mean cutting out private insurers, "and like it or not, incumbent players have a lot of power."
Moreover, he added,
single-payer would require a lot of additional tax revenue — and we would be talking about taxes on the middle class, not just the wealthy. It’s true that higher taxes would be offset by a sharp reduction or even elimination of private insurance premiums, but it would be difficult to make that case to the broad public, especially given the chorus of misinformation you know would dominate the airwaves.
Finally, and I suspect most important, switching to single-payer would impose a lot of disruption on tens of millions of families who currently have good coverage through their employers...
Read the rest at the New York Times...
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