Sanders’s single-payer health care proposal is here.
Under Berniecare, all Americans would be enrolled in a federally administered health insurance program that covers the full array of health services. The program would be free at the point of delivery, meaning that there would be no premiums, no deductibles, no copays, and no coinsurance. Those who need care would simply go to the doctor and show their national health insurance card, and then the government would pick up the bill.
To pay for his plan, Sanders proposes the following: a 6.2 percent payroll tax levied on employers; a 2.2 percent income tax surcharge levied on individuals; increasing the tax rates for those making over $250,000 per year; taxing capital gains as regular income; increasing the estate tax on large inheritances; and phasing out tax expenditures for the rich. By replacing private insurance with public insurance funded in this manner, Sanders claims the typical middle class family would save $5,000 per year.
According to a December 2015 poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 52 percent of Democrats strongly favor a Medicare-for-all plan like the one Sanders has proposed, though the Clinton campaign has recently attacked such single-payer systems.
