HEALTHCARE: “While Bernie Sanders readies a single-payer health care bill that the GOP is itching to attack, one of his Democratic colleagues is proposing a step toward that goal that could give cover to the party’s vulnerable incumbents.
Sen. Chris Murphy, a potential presidential contender, is working on legislation expected this fall that would let every individual and business buy into Medicare as part of Obamacare’s exchanges. As Sanders and other potential challengers to President Donald Trump flock to ‘Medicare for all,’ embracing a top liberal priority before 2020, Murphy is taking a conspicuously more pragmatic approach designed to get Democrats closer to that lofty but potentially unobtainable goal.
In the process, it could give vulnerable Democrats loath to attach themselves to Sanders a more politically palatable alternative that still satisfies the party’s base.
The first-term senator is also raising his national profile by wading into the hot-button single-payer debate — though the Connecticut Democrat has tamped down talk that he might take on Trump in 2020. It’s not about competing with Sanders, Murphy says, but rather offering a complementary path toward the creation of a single-payer system.”
-Elana Schor, “Chris Murphy’s stealthy single-payer pitch,” Politico, Sept. 8, 2017 11:17am