2016 Election Night

During the Democratic primary, Bernie Sanders pushed for a universal single-payer health care system he dubbed “Medicare for All.” Sanders’s home state of Vermont tried, and failed, to implement a single-payer system in 2014. Costs and political considerations doomed the Vermont plan, but nevertheless, Sanders has thrown his support behind Colorado Amendment 69, which would create a statewide universal health insurance system funded by a 10 percent tax on payrolls and other income. In return for these payments, all Colorado residents would receive comprehensive medical coverage with no deductibles. The system would replace employer-provided and private insurance but exist alongside programs like Medicare and Medicaid. (Participants would still be free to buy additional insurance if they wanted.) An independent 21-member elected board would govern the ColoradoCare system, whose budget of about $38 billion would dwarf the size of the current state government. Proponents, who include Sanders and Gloria Steinem, say that the system would help slow down increases in health care costs and eliminate wasteful administrative costs. Opponents argue the amendment would give Colorado the highest income tax rates in the country and that doctors might leave the state if they weren’t satisfied with the payments the system provided. Abortion rights groups also oppose the measure, concerned that the program would reduce access to abortion due to a 1984 amendment to the state constitution that bans government money from going toward the procedure. The measure appears unlikely to pass. A recent poll showed widespread opposition to it, with 65 percent of respondents saying they’d vote no.