Medicare for All has been a hotly debated topic during the 2020 presidential campaign season so far. John McDonough argued in a February 21, 2020 op-ed in Health Affairs that too much time has been spent discussing the issue, “not because it’s a bad idea … [but] because, for the foreseeable future, Medicare for All has zero political chance to become law.”
McDonough, professor of the practice of public health and director of executive and continuing professional education at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, analyzed the relationship between the political conditions in the U.S. during the previous 70 years and the success or failure of comprehensive or incremental efforts to advance universal health care during that time period.
Read the Health Affairs op-ed: Medicare For All: What History Can Teach Us About Its Chances