Dive Brief:
- Hillary Clinton used a Virginia campaign stop Monday to put the focus on her longtime support for a government-run health plan, Bloomberg Politics reports.
- She discussed letting younger individuals buy into Medicare or creating a separate government-run plan to sell through the Obamacare exchanges.
- The idea provides a compromise to the single-payer vision promoted by rival Bernie Sanders.
Dive Insight:
Though Clinton's position on a public option is nothing new, it is new that she's putting out her idea to open up the Medicare system as an option to accomplish a public option, her campaign says.
Clinton's website suggests rather than involving Congress, she would work with interested state governors to use already available flexibility under the Affordable Care Act to allow states to establish a public choice.
As Bloomberg notes, the idea of a public option was once popular among liberal Democrats but didn't make it into the Affordable Care Act legislation due to opposition from Republicans and insurance companies.
Clinton's campaign stop also addressed the cutoff point for Affordable Care Act subsidies, suggesting that rather than a single cutoff based on salary, there should be a gradual diminishment.