It is a disgrace that we remain the only industrialized country in the world that doesn’t provide universal coverage. As a nation, we spend almost double what other advanced economies spend on health care. Yet nearly 27 million Americans still lack health insurance. It is a moral imperative that we fix this.

The growing costs of coverage, care, and prescription drugs burden or bankrupt families and small businesses every day. Every American must have access to affordable, high-quality health care.

The Bennet Administration will achieve these goals with Medicare-X, a public option plan that builds on the Affordable Care Act instead of ripping out the progress we’ve made over the last 10 years.

Medicare-X will:

• Establish a public insurance option — an insurance plan that would be available on the exchange for people to buy if they had no insurance or didn’t like their current private insurance.
• Start on the individual exchange in rural areas with one or no insurers. Over the course of two years, Medicare-X expands to every county in the country and becomes available on the small business exchange.
• Require the federal government, for the first time in history, to negotiate lower drug prices for Medicare and Medicare-X.
• Include all of the essential health benefits required under the ACA, including maternity care and mental health services.
• Provide an affordable option without adding government bureaucracy by using the Medicare framework.
• Save taxpayer dollars and reduce the deficit because Medicare-X’s payment rates to medical providers are lower than those for private insurance.
• Ensure that individuals will not pay any more than 13% of their income on insurance premiums. For millions of Americans, it would be even less. A family of four making $101,000 would have a maximum of 9% of their income that would be spent on premiums, and they would see their current premiums cut in half.
• Increase the tax credit for individuals earning less than 400% of the federal poverty line and eliminate the arbitrary subsidy cliff and provide premium tax credits for those earning more than 400% of the federal poverty level, who currently do not qualify for any assistance.
• Authorize $30 billion over three years for a national reinsurance program to stabilize the marketplace.
• Direct additional reforms to coordinate health care with employment, education, food, housing, and transportation, all of which affect health and often result in delays to accessing health care.

Unlike Medicare for All, Medicare-X does not ban employer- or union-provided insurance for the 180 million Americans who have it now, nor does it kick 22 million seniors off of Medicare Advantage.

We cannot afford to wait another day, another month, or another election to provide the high-quality, affordable care Americans need. We need a proposal that has broad support from the American people. That plan is Medicare-X.