Dean Phillips, an upstart challenger to Biden, embraces ‘Medicare for All’
As he challenges President Biden on the long term, Rep. Dean Phillips says he’s had an epiphany about America’s health care policy.
Gone is his long-standing skepticism about the implementation of a single-payer national health care system. Now Mr. Phillips, a moderate Democrat from Minnesota, is embracing the “Medicare for All” proposal, which was championed in two presidential campaigns by Senator Bernie Sanders — whose former top aide is now advising Mr. Phillips’ campaign.
Mr. Phillips said in an interview on Tuesday that he would join as a cosponsor of a House proposal that would expand Medicare by creating a national health insurance program available to all Americans, a shift that comes seven weeks into a presidential campaign that has took place. have not yet shown significant progress in public opinion polls.
“I was a good example of someone who was convinced by propaganda that it was a nonsensical left-wing idea,” Mr. Phillips said. “It’s not. It really isn’t. And that, I think, is part of my migration, if you will, a migration of understanding and due diligence and intellectual curiosity and, most importantly, listening to people..”
Embracing the House bill is a low-stakes maneuver. Now that Republicans are in control of the House, it is unlikely that it will be voted on. Even when Representative Nancy Pelosi of California was speaker, Democrats never voted on Medicare for All proposals championed by their progressive caucus — largely because President Biden did not support such a move, and centrist Democrats believed it was also a bridge. far.
Mr. Phillips — who spoke in the interview by videoconference, from an onscreen profile that identified him as “Generic Democrat” in a sly nod to the top performer in the polls — argued that his recent evolution on health care was not an attempt to outflank Mr. Phillips. Biden from the left.
Instead, he said, he has become convinced that expanding Medicare, the government-run insurance program for the elderly, to all Americans would ultimately save the federal government money and attract support not just from progressives but also from conservatives – including backers. from former President Donald J. Trump.
“This is absolutely not a Hail Mary,” Mr Phillips said. “It’s not an olive branch to progressives. Do you know what it really is? It is an invitation to Trumpers.”
Biden’s campaign spokesman, Kevin Munoz, declined to comment on Mr. Phillips.
Mr. Phillips, a businessman who became wealthy and helped run his family spirits distilling empire and later helped build a gelato giant, is the former chairman of Allina Health, one of Minnesota’s largest health care systems. He said his beliefs began to change about a decade ago, when his daughter Pia, then 13, was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and he “saw the divide between the haves and the have-nots.”
In July 2020, as a first-term congressman, he embraced a “public state option” that would allow Americans to purchase Medicaid. More recently, he said, he has consulted with Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, who is a House Medicare’s lead sponsor for all billssupported by more than half of Democrats in the House of Representatives.
Mr. Biden has shifted the Democratic conversation on health care away from the idea of a single-payer plan, focusing instead on narrower issues such as lowering drug costs and improving maternal health.
“This is not a serious proposal as it stands,” Leslie Dach, chairman of the health care group Protect Our Care and a former Obama administration official, said of Mr. Phillips’ move. “We live in an age where it takes all our energy to protect what we have from Republicans in Congress.”
Mr. Phillips has not gained much traction. A poll last month from CNN and the University of New Hampshire found that he had support from about 10 percent of likely Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire, the only state where he has a campaign apparatus. Mr. Biden’s name will not appear on the ballot there, but the same CNN poll found that 65 percent of voters said they would write in his name.
Mr. Phillips said he hoped to do well in New Hampshire before moving to Michigan, where Mr. Biden’s approval ratings have taken a hit in recent polls from black and Arab-American voters who have rejected his support for Israel in its war against Hamas.
But Mr. Phillips offered little clarity between himself and Mr. Biden on that conflict, which has left Democratic voters fiercely divided. The congressman said he would not call for an immediate ceasefire and that he does not consider Israel “an apartheid state,” as many on the left claim.
Still, Mr. Phillips claimed that Democrats were so disenchanted with Mr. Biden that if given another option, they would accept it.
“The good news is that 66 percent of the country doesn’t hate me yet,” Phillips said, criticizing the president’s dismal approval ratings. “America has already made up its mind about President Biden and Vice President Harris.”