New Report From Corporate Democrats Falsely Claims Medicare For All Is “Unpopular”

The report declares that Medicare for All is in the category of “unpopular economic policies.” The claim is false.

By Jeff Cohen

This week began with the release of a report titled “Deciding to Win,” claiming to light the way “toward a common sense renewal of the Democratic Party.” But the first mention of healthcare is so far from reality that the authors might have more accurately titled their report “Deciding to Lie.”

The report declares that Medicare for All is in the category of “unpopular economic policies.” The claim is false. But it’s in sync with the corporate sensibilities and wishful thinking of party operatives like James Carville, whose praise of the document appears on its first page.

In fact, for many years public opinion on Medicare for All has been clearly favorable. But the authors of the report, who call themselves The Welcome Team, will have none of it.

Shoddy research is required for The Welcome Team (which claims to “represent the middle”) to dismiss Medicare for All as an “unpopular” economic policy. It is, of course, clearly unpopular with the health insurance companies that fund and influence corporate “Third Way” Democrats.

• An Economist/You Gov poll of more than 1,500 adult citizens, conducted in July of this year, found that Medicare for All was supported by 59 percent of those polled (including 36 percent who “strongly support”) — and opposed by only 27 percent.  Medicare for All was supported by almost every demographic group, including ideological “moderates” (67% to 17%) and those who identify as “independents” (57% to 24%/56% to 18%). The only demographics with a majority opposing it were Trump supporters, conservatives or Republicans/Republican-leaners.

• Despite fervent opposition from Wall Street and health insurance companies, the Medicare for All Act was introduced in April of this year with more than 100 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives.

• Gallup’s annual healthcare survey in November 2024 asks a similar, but different, question – whether “it is the responsibility of the federal government to make sure all Americans have healthcare coverage” or not. The percentage responding yes has risen to 62 percent, while just 36 percent said no.

• In 2020 Democratic primaries in Southern states that pitted Bernie Sanders (a Medicare for All supporter) against Joe Biden (an opponent), most Democrats supported Medicare for All (according to NBC News exit polls) even in states that Biden won overwhelmingly. In Mississippi, where Biden bested Bernie by 81 to 15 percent, 6 in 10 Democrats in exit polls supported replacing all private health insurance with Medicare for All vs. 32% opposed.

What’s especially important about the recent Economist/YouGov poll and similar polls going back years is that Medicare for All is popular with the public despite a near-total exclusion of media pundits who support the policy — whether at the New York Times or New York Post, whether at CNN or Fox News. In mainstream media, the policy is rarely uplifted and regularly denigrated.

During the 2020 Democratic primaries, for example, journalists regularly pressed Bernie Sanders for the price tag of his Medicare for All proposal, but defenders of the private-insurance-dominated system were never pressed on the costs to society of sticking with the status quo — which is far more expensive (due to bureaucracy, huge CEO salaries,  insurance company profits).

While the polling is clear, so is the agenda of the “Deciding to Win” authors and their backers in the corporate Democratic Party establishment. They were likely pleased with the headline that one media outlet gave to coverage of the report on Monday: “Left-Wing Ideas Have Wrecked Democrats’ Brand, New Report Warns.” But pretending that Medicare for All is unpopular indicates how far their elitism has taken them from the concerns of most people in the United States.

Jeff Cohen is co-founder of RootsAction.org, a retired journalism professor at Ithaca College, and author of Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media. In 1986, he founded the media watch group FAIR.