For publicly supporting single-payer, Bernie is ridiculously bold, amazing, honest, and authentic
Why? Pretty much no major political figure besides him is talking about single-payer, Medicare-for-All healthcare. No one. Congressional Democrats, even pretty much everyone in the Progressive Caucus, support corporate healthcare (the individual mandate), instead of single-payer. The Congressional Progressive Caucus is pushing for a "public option," but it is mostly calling for working within the Affordable Care Act and doing incremental reforms. Single-payer has been pretty much out of the conversation even among "progressive" Democrats in Congress.
I believe before the ACA passed, there were 80 or so Democrats in the House who co-sponsored single-payer. Dennis Kucinich talked a lot about HR 676 (the Medicare-for-All bill). Rep. John Conyers also pushed hard for single-payer. But after Obamacare, pretty much every establishment Democrat, including previous single-payer supporters, abandoned their long-term goal of Medicare-for-All and rallied behind Obamacare. No major Democrat talks about how the ACA is a step in the right direction, but single-payer is the ultimate end goal. Too many Democrats have come to "accept" the ACA, forgetting that the fight is far from over, and forgetting that the finish line is single-payer when 35 million Americans remain uninsured by our greedy, for-profit, employer-based private health insurance model. It's extremely costly, inefficient, convoluted, etc., while single-payer would be far more cost-effective. Heck, we were sold out by Alan Grayson, Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, and others on the issue: they previously supported single-payer, but opposed it after ACA was passed.
The passing of the ACA basically destroyed whatever political momentum there was for single-payer since healthcare reform activists got a universal healthcare bill that "kind of" satisfied their needs. Democrats were too scared to support single-payer in the post ACA era, because it would make them seem like they were betraying or going against President Obama and his landmark healthcare reform. But the truth is that the ACA really did not go far enough. No one wanted to go through another round of healthcare reform since they were fatigued from the ACA fight, especially when single-payer is far more liberal than the individual mandate, which is a center-right idea proposed by the Heritage Foundation in the 1980s, backed by the GOP in the 1990s, supported by Newt Gingrich, and implemented by Mitt Romney when he was governor.
Heck, I love Elizabeth Warren to death, but even she sold out on single-payer after Obamacare was passed. Unlike Bernie who stayed consistent and committed to his views and principles, Elizabeth played a little bit of politics on healthcare (even though she's amazing 99% of the time). She supported it in 2008 in a book, but when she ran for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts, she said she didn't support single-payer, and instead, wanted to focus on the current healthcare reform under Obamacare. It's fine to say that we need incremental change, and we need to focus with what we have, but she could have tied short-term reforms to a desire for long-term systemic change, and said that the end goal for progressives should still be single-payer. But she did not. Single-payer is no longer part of her vocabulary, either as a policy goal or as an end goal, as it is no longer in the vocabulary of pretty much ever Democrat in Congress.
Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders comes out boldly, unabashedly calling for single-payer, Medicare-for-All. He's not being wishy washy or trying to compromise with a public option. He wants the full deal. And for him to call for that, to buck the Democratic Party establishment (which includes so called "progressive" Dems), that's extremely brave of him and admirable. Even if he doesn't win the nomination, he can spark a conversation and make single-payer a hot button topic among progressives activists, reigniting pressure on elected Democrats to fight for it in the future. Bernie's pushing the envelop, trying to make a previous "fringe" idea mainstream, and moving the Ovteron window to the left. Bernie's truly a visionary and a revolutionary, willing to take on huge political risks to fight for what he truly believes in. Bernie's so freaking amazing for sticking to guns.
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