Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) on Monday called his Medicare for All program "the least disruptive approach" to national health care reform.
In a town hall speech at Franklin Pierce University, the 78-year-old said, "Now, people say, 'Medicare for All is gonna be so disruptive, it’s such a radical idea, oh my goodness.' Actually, it's the least disruptive approach to moving toward universal health care."
"Now Medicare is a good program," Sanders continued. "It is not good enough. Under our Medicare for All, we’re going to expand Medicare to cover dental care, hearing aids, eyeglasses."
The Vermont senator went on to describe plans for additional health care coverage, including "home health care" to let the elderly and disabled stay at home rather than live in a nursing home. He also claimed that a progressive tax system would sufficiently fund this whole program, with most Americans paying "substantially less" than they do now.
Medicare for All is the leading policy proposal of Sanders’s 2020 campaign. It would effectively abolish private health insurance, setting up a single-payer government-run system and booting over 181 million Americans off their current health care plans.
Sanders admitted in an interview last month that he did not know how much Medicare for All would cost and that it would be impossible for anyone to know.