AP FACT CHECK: Democratic debaters and the facts

Obviously in this environment universal health care is going no where, but that is true of most things most candidates of either party say!

I agree that the ACA is a bone thrown to the insurance industry, a catering to the insurance lobby (which has for years been the biggest lobby out there) and that a significant part of the cost of health care is the cost of feeding a giant insurance bureaucracy. We should cut out the middleman. Put a million plus insurance workers on the unemployment line. "Should" -- but not feasible.

However, "medicare for everybody" could be phased in without immediately scrapping the ACA. For example, make everybody 60 and older eligible for Medicare. Then 5 years later, everybody 55 or older, and so on. That way the bureaucracy could be grown slowly as the program expands.   The only way to do it, really.

You don't have to "tear up the ACA," just phase it out.

And notice that by going from older folks down, the ACA is actually strengthened financially, by taking those who are older and sicker out of the ACA!