Medicare for All is the ‘Yes We Can’ of Health Care

Medicare for All is the ‘Yes We Can’ of Health Care

How a socialist-seeming health-care policy became a rallying cry in the Democratic mainstream

If you want to understand why Rebecca Wood helps Medicare for All, you need to recognize the tale of her mouth. In 2015, Wood cracked a enamel. Around the identical time, her daughter, Charlie, started out to talk. Charlie was already three years old, but her untimely beginning had left her with behind schedule speech and in need of good sized cures. When a payment for Charlie’s speech remedy came due, Wood, who had stopped operating so she could contend with her daughter, had to make a desire. Should she pay for a root canal and crown for herself, or pay for Charlie’s remedy?

Wood could only afford one, she told me recently. Deciding not to risk losing momentum on Charlie’s language skills, she opted to postpone the root canal. But before she could get the procedure done, she developed an infection that spread throughout her entire mouth and jaw. A dentist had to drain her infection and scrape away part of her jaw under local anesthesia; Wood could not afford to be put completely under. The dentist also pulled every one of her teeth. “I told myself this is the price of a miracle,” Wood says, of her daughter.

The preference she became pressured to make still stings—once in a while actually. Wood now has dentures, and that they in shape poorly. Her dental coverage simplest covers a brand new pair each five years. Throughout this saga, Wood was frustrated that her medical health insurance didn’t shield her from outstanding payments and tough selections. It felt like politicians didn’t care. She determined that “the best manner we’re going to ever have health-care justice is if the guys writing the regulations should stay through it.” That could mean anybody would have the identical health insurance plan. Which could imply Medicare for All.