Should Medicare for All be Democrats’ top priority?
Health care, climate change, and political reality collided this week, when experts discussing national single-payer health insurance clashed over the question of whether Democrats should make it their top priority if the party manages to retake both the White House and Congress this year. John McDonough, a professor of the practice of public health who played a role in the design and passage of the Affordable Care Act, shook his head, arguing that recent history suggests health-care overhaul debates tend to crowd out all other issues and to exact a high political price. “Health care is vitally important, but so is climate change, so is voting rights, so is gun control,” he said. “When health reform is on the agenda, it sucks up all the political oxygen in the room, and there’s very little room or space for anything.” Adam Gaffney, an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School and president of Physicians...