Make the Public Option a Focus of the Campaign

The platform of the Democratic Party declared 40 years ago that Democrats favored “the orderly and progressive development of a comprehensive national health insurance program which is federally financed.”

The case that Democrats made for “a comprehensive national health insurance system with universal and mandatory coverage” that would be paid for with tax revenues was not radical—or new. Almost three decades earlier, the Democratic platform of 1948 announced that “We favor the enactment of a national health program” and Harry Truman argued on the campaign trail for health care as a human right. “I put it to you, it is un-American to visit the sick, aid the afflicted or comfort the dying?” the president said. “I thought that was simple Christianity.”

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