As he mounted a longtime primary challenge to President Biden, Representative Dean Phillips said he had an epiphany about American health care policy.
His public skepticism about adopting a national single-payer health care system disappeared. Now Mr. Phillips, a moderate Democrat from Minnesota, embraces the “Medicare for all” proposal championed in two presidential campaigns by Senator Bernie Sanders — whose former top aide is now advising Mr. Phillips.
said Mr. Phillips in an interview Tuesday that he will join as a co-sponsor a House measure that would expand Medicare by creating a national health insurance program available to all Americans, a change that comes seven weeks into a presidential campaign that has yet to show significant progress in public polling.
“I’m a good example of someone who has been convinced by propaganda that this is an absurd left-wing notion,” Mr. Phillips said. “No. Not really. And that I think that was part of my transition, if you will, a transition of understanding and due diligence and intellectual curiosity and above all, listening to people.”
Passing the House bill is a low-stakes maneuver. With Republicans in control of the chamber, it has little chance of passing a vote. Even when Representative Nancy Pelosi of California was speaker, Democrats never held a vote on the Medicare for All proposals that their progressive caucus had fought for — largely because President Biden did not support such a measure, and believed these centrist Democrats are also a bridge away.
Mr. Phillips – who spoke in the interview via videoconference, from an onscreen profile identifying him as a “Generic Democrat” in a subtle nod to the party’s best performer in the polls – argued that his recent evolution in care health is not an effort to surpass Mr. Biden from left.
Instead, he said, he became convinced that expanding Medicare, the government-run insurance program for the elderly, to cover all Americans would end up saving the federal government money and should attract of support not only from progressives but also from conservatives – including advocates. of former President Donald J. Trump.
“This is not a Hail Mary, by any stretch,” said Mr. Phillips. “This is not an olive branch to progressives. You know what it really is? It’s an invitation to Trumpers.
Mr. Biden’s campaign spokesman, Kevin Munoz, declined to comment on Mr. Phillips.
Mr. Phillips, a businessman who got rich helping run his family wine distilling empire and later helped build a gelato behemoth, is a former board chairman of Allina Health, one of Minnesota’s largest health care systems. He said his beliefs began to change about 10 years ago, when his daughter Pia, then 13, received a diagnosis of Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and he saw “the gaps between those who have haves and have-nots.”
In July 2020, as a first-term congressman, he accepted a “state public option” that would allow Americans to buy into Medicaid. Recently, he said, he consulted with Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, who is a lead sponsor of House Medicare for all billswhich is supported by more than half of House Democrats.
Mr. Biden has steered the Democratic conversation about health care away from the idea of a single-payer plan, focusing instead on narrower issues such as lowering drug costs and improving maternal health.
“It’s not a serious environmental proposal right now,” Leslie Dach, the chair of the health advocacy group Protect Our Care and a former Obama administration official, said of Mr. Phillips. “We live in a time where it takes all our strength to protect what we have from Republicans in Congress.”
Mr. Phillips did not gain much traction. A poll last month from CNN and the University of New Hampshire found that he had support from about 10 percent of likely Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire, the only state where he had campaign equipment. Mr. Biden’s name was not on the ballot there, but the same CNN poll found that 65 percent of voters said they would write in his name.
Mr. Phillips said he hoped to do well in New Hampshire before moving on to Michigan, where Mr. Biden’s approval ratings in recent polls have taken a hit from Black and Arab American voters who are not agrees with his support for Israel in its war against Hamas.
But Mr. Phillips has offered little in the light of day between himself and Mr. Biden in that battle, which has sharply divided Democratic voters. The congressman said he would not call for an immediate ceasefire and did not consider Israel “an apartheid state,” as many on the left have argued.
Still, Mr. Phillips contended that Democrats were so disillusioned with Mr. Biden that if given another option, they would take it.
“The good news is that 66 percent of the country doesn’t hate me yet,” Mr. Phillips said, in a dig at the president’s dismal approval ratings. “America has made up its mind about President Biden and Vice President Harris.”
