What Went Down At The CNN Democratic Debate

The Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as “Obamacare,” has brought health insurance to millions of Americans. But millions more remain uninsured. Some of that is expected; some young people, for example, have declined to sign up for insurance, and many immigrants were intentionally excluded by the law. But nearly 4 million Americans fall into the “Medicaid gap” — they were meant to be covered under the law, but many Republican-led states declined to expand Medicaid as originally intended.

The Associated Press did a poll this winter and asked voters about Sanders’s proposed single-payer health care plan. The survey “found that people’s initial impressions of Sanders’ single-payer plan are more favorable than their views of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul,” according to the AP. But when “asked whether they would continue to support Sanders’ plan if their own taxes went up, under a third of initial supporters of the plan would keep backing it. About 4 out of 10 flipped to opposition.”

The non-partisan Tax Policy Center estimates that Sanders’s tax plan would increase revenue by $15.3 trillion over the next decade. Pretty much everyone would pay more in taxes, but the rich would shoulder by far the largest burden, as Sanders has promised. But it isn’t clear that Sanders’s big tax hikes would cover the cost of his spending proposals.