Although the picture for Sanders himself was by no means as rosy as his devotees hoped, insurers may not want to get their hopes up just yet. (Photo: Shutterstock)
Americans may have been "feeling the Bern" in the leadup to Super Tuesday, but the polls show that the excitement of Sen. Bernie Sanders's supporters may be cooling. While Bernie took home nearly the entire state of California, former Vice President Joe Biden came away the winner.
Although the picture for Sanders himself was by no means as rosy as his devotees hoped, insurers had better not get their hopes up just yet at the chance to avoid some form of Medicare for All. In fact, according to a Common Dreams report, "majorities in every state with exit polling data available agreed on at least one deeply consequential policy aspiration: replacing private health insurance with a government-run plan that covers everyone."
Super Tuesday exit polls conducted by Edison Research, which has conducted exit polls in all but two states—Arkansas and Utah—indicated that although voters may not be united in which candidate to support, they're pretty well united with majority support on something else: private insurance has to go, and the government needs to step in.
According to Kaiser Family Foundation's tracking polls, health care continues to be the top issue among Democratic voters. But how do candidate preferences reflect reform preferences? KFF has put together an interactive map parsing health care opinions in each state. In Colorado, for example, where Bernie won 36.2 percent of the primary votes, 63 percent of voters would favor a single-payer system, and 87 percent would favor a public option. But that's not too out of line with voter preferences in South Carolina, which Biden won with 48.4 percent of delegate votes. There, 66 percent favor a single-payer system, and 87 percent support a public option.
Considering Sanders's clean sweep of voting in the first four states, and that the lowest margin of support for a M4A system on Super Tuesday was 50-45 percent in Massachusetts (in Vermont, it was 73 percent to 23 percent), most politicians may be asking the wrong questions or delivering the wrong answers in their efforts to win voters.
What that means for Sanders' chances—and for his plan for Medicare for All—remains to be seen, since although Biden took more states—he won nine, including Texas, while Sanders won just four (Bloomberg, by the way, who has since dropped out, took American Samoa)—Sanders, with 382 delegates, trails Biden's 453 delegates by only 71.
There are still more than half the states to go. And considering that to win the nomination unchallenged at the national convention, a candidate needs 1,991 delegates altogether, it'll be a while before Democratic voters see whether the state of California—considered all-important in the race to the White House—will be enough to help Sanders, and Medicare for All, survive until the convention, whether other potential candidates will have to come around to Bernie Sanders' (and Elizabeth Warren's) points of view on Medicare for All, or whether Biden's comeback is truly as extraordinary as it currently appears.
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Marlene Satter
Marlene Y. Satter has worked in and written about the financial industry for decades.
