(CNN)<\/b>A Democratic senator said Tuesday that his conservative constituents are warming to the idea of universal government-run insurance, which has long been a policy goal of progressives.<\/p>\n
“What I’m hearing — even in these conservative parts of my state that I lost by 30, 40% when I was running for re-election — what I’m hearing is the system is way too stressful,” Sen. Jeff Merkley told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota during a discussion on health care legislation on “New Day.” “I’ve been asking each audience, I’ve been saying, ‘How many people here 10 years ago would have supported a single-payer Medicare-for-all?’ And it’s a small number. And then I ask, ‘How many now?’ And the hands just go up throughout the room.”<\/p>\n
Merkley added, “People are so stressed about the complexity and difficulty of our health care system. Can’t we make this simpler?”<\/p>\n
Merkley’s Republican colleagues in Congress, however, have given no indication that they would consider legislation to create a single-payer health insurance program. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that a single-payer health care plan similar to the one championed by Sen. Bernie Sanders during his presidential campaign “would strip Americans of so many facets of decision-making over their own health-care and hand it to the government.”<\/p>\n
Merkley was on “New Day” to discuss the Senate GOP’s health care bill, which includes proposals to eliminate the taxes imposed on high-income Americans to help pay for an expansion of health benefits under the Affordable Care Act.<\/p>\n
CNN’s Tami Luhby contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(CNN)A Democratic senator said Tuesday that his conservative constituents are warming to the idea of universal government-run insurance, which has long been a policy goal of progressives. “What I’m hearing — even in these conservative parts of my state that I lost by 30, 40% when I was running for re-election — what I’m hearing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n