Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA), in 2017, touted healthcare reform that would have many of the same “features” as Medicare for All.
Casey, in June 2017, held a town hall in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, at Franklin & Marshall College. During the town hall, one constituent asked if the Pennsylvania Democrat would support “universal health care.”
Casey responded, “I’m certainly open to that. I haven’t seen a bill yet, but Bernie Sanders is working on one.”
The Pennsylvania Democrat then fearmongered about Republican efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, saying that it might be the worst thing to happen to health care “in many, many decades.”
He continued, saying that if Republicans fail to repeal and replace Obamacare, then Congress could move on to more progressive reform, such as a “public option,” especially for regions that only have one health insurer.
A public option is a government-sponsored or government-run health insurance plan that would compete with private health insurance options.
“We should have a Medicare-like public option right now, which would create competition; it would have a lot of the same features as a Medicare for All bill or something like that,” Casey explained.
Casey touted that Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-VT) Medicare for All bill “is in furtherance” of the Democrat goal of getting more Americans health insurance.
Casey’s openness to Medicare for All, as well as his touting of healthcare reform that contains many “features” of Medicare for All, is in stark contrast to Tuesday’s presidential debate, where Vice President Kamala Harris only said she would maintain and preserve the Affordable Care Act, not a public option or Medicare for All. In 2017, Harris backed Medicare for All.
Healthcare experts have warned that a public option, which Casey touted, serves as a “trojan horse” with single-payer health care “hiding inside.”
“The public option is a Trojan horse with a single-payer [healthcare system] hiding inside,” then-Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Seema Verma said during a speech in 2019.
“It would use the force of government price-setting to crowd private insurers out of the marketplace altogether and achieve the true policy goal of a government-run single-payer healthcare system,” she continued. Verma said that a public option would lower patients’ access to healthcare services.
Jonathan Allen of NBC News, in 2019, said a public option essentially serves as a “backdoor” to single-payer health care.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) said in 2019 in an interview with Breitbart News that with the “Joe Biden [public option] plan, basically, they’ll set up a government insurance company and it won’t have to live by the same rules; it’s just a way to get everyone on a government plan.”
“If you do Biden’s plan and what’s going to happen there, they’ll set up the rules where other insurance companies cannot compete, so you’ll lose your private insurance, the costs will go [up], the taxpayer is going to pay for this,” Scott added.
“If we go down the same path with this, the plan that Joe Biden wants, the government starts taking it over; I mean there’s no way that we could pay for it,” Scott said. “We can’t pay for it as we do now.”
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), in 2020, contended that a public option would bankrupt rural hospitals, which would run counter to Casey’s claim that it could help rural Americans access health care.Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on X @SeanMoran3.
