Presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders has called for adopting a single-payer health care system in the United States.1 He proposes replacing the programs established under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), as well as preexisting public programs such as Medicaid and Medicare, with the new system. Under his approach, all individuals in the United States would be covered by a single insurance program. Sanders’s plan would eliminate all private spending and replace all private and public coverage programs, except Veterans Health Insurance and the Indian Health Service. Benefits provided under the insurance plan would cover all medically necessary services, and cost sharing would be eliminated entirely. Coverage would include both acute and long-term care.
The Sanders Single-Payer Health Care Plan