Challenges To Medicare For All Remain Daunting

Abstract

Medicare for All plans have many advantages over the status quo. Yet the challenges facing such plans are immense, reflecting their ambitions to achieve universal coverage through a single federal plan and their disruption to existing insurance and financing arrangements. Medicare for All will not become viable unless it can meet the daunting political, economic, and administrative realities that govern US health care.

Keywords: Clinical care; Cost containment; Cost sharing; Costs and spending; Health policy; Medicaid; Medicare; Medicare For All; Politics; Private health insurance; Single payer; Taxes; Traditional Medicare; Universal coverage.