Single payer is "going to
happen," the former senator said
Former Montana Sen. Max Baucus
made headlines—and some people's
heads explode—on Friday after it was reported
that the powerful Democrat who once stood
so firmly against single-payer healthcare now thinks it's a solution whose
time has come.
"My personal view is
we've got to start looking at single payer," Baucus said
Thursday night during an appearance at Montana State University. "I think
we should have hearings…. We're getting there. It's going to happen."
In 2009, Baucus was singing a
rather different tune when he was chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, one
of the most powerful positions in Congress during the healthcare debate that
year. Baucus declared single payer "off the table" and had
single-payer proponents arrested after they disrupted a committee hearing. Those
arrested were later called the "Baucus
8."
Dr. Pat Salomon, who was
arrested alongside other physicians and activists, explained why the protests
were necessary:
When we looked at the list of
41 people testifying in the three days of the Finance Committee's roundtable on
healthcare, we saw that not a single witness was an advocate of the principle
that healthcare should be a fundamental human right for all in America, nor was
there anyone to speak for the majority of the American people who support
single-payer Medicare for All.
Watch a video of the protests:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncb58qnDyxs
Reacting to Baucus's steadfast
refusal to consider single payer in 2009, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said
the Montana senator would not "in a milllion years" be open to the
idea of a Medicare for All system.
Many others felt the same way
as Sanders, and thus could not conceal their surprise when news of Baucus's
comments Thursday night emerged:
One hundred percent of my
brain is still on fire over how insane it is that MAX BAUCUS is for single-payer
nowhttps://t.co/AndyvSjSvR
— Sam Baker (@sam_baker) September 8,
2017
I reckon I don't want Max
Baucus's vision of single payer as my own, but I'm glad we've made our demands
loud enough that he had to "evolve"
— timothy faust (@crulge) September 8, 2017
Baucus's remarks come amid
what Vox's Dylan Matthews called
on Thursday a "stunning Democratic shift on single payer."
"In 2008, no leading
Democratic presidential candidate backed single-payer. In 2020, all of them might,"
Matthews wrote, adding: "soon no Democratic leader will be able to oppose
single payer."
As Common Dreams has reported,
this rapid shift in opinion among the Democratic leadership comes in the face
of tremendous grassroots enthusiasm for Medicare for All. According to a recent
poll, 62 percent of Americans now believe it is the federal government's
responsibility to provide healthcare to all Americans.
On the back of this surging
grassroots support, Sanders will introduce Medicare for All legislation in the
Senate on Wednesday.
Two prominent Democrats—Sens.
Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Elizabeth
Warren (D-Mass.)—have announced they will co-sponsor the bill.
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