'Medicare for All' movement has lost its punch, one critic says

The low turnout for the "Medicare for All" rallies that took place across the U.S. July 24 is proof the movement has lost its momentum, according to MSNBC opinion columnist Zeeshan Aleem.

"The fading of Medicare for All — one of the most promising ways to alter the way Americans think about the shortcomings of a radically privatized society — has in turn probably reduced the likelihood of the badly needed compromise of a public insurance option," he wrote in a July 28 op-ed, "How 'Medicare for All' became a casualty of the Biden era."

Mr. Aleem argued President Joe Biden has set aside efforts to reform healthcare to focus on other issues, even leaving the reform policy of a public healthcare option out of his latest budget proposal.

"Even if his administration were somehow secretly interested in the concept, he's currently working with a Senate Democratic majority so slim that a policy as sweeping and polarizing as Medicare for All — which would require a 60-vote majority to overcome a filibuster — is simply a political impossibility," he wrote. 

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