Biden Needs Bigger (Smarter) Ideas.

• Author: Glastris, Paul
• Position: Editor's Note

Joe Biden enters the final two months of the 2020 campaign about as well positioned ideologically as any Democratic presidential nominee in decades. Over the summer he and Bernie Sanders negotiated a set of policy positions in which the former vice president moved to the left on everything from climate change to immigration. But he conspicuously stopped short of signing on to the most controversial "big ideas" of his socialist rival, such as Medicare for All and decriminalizing illegal border crossings.

This new agenda, because it's been blessed by Sanders and other progressives, gives left-leaning Democrats reason to hold their noses and vote for Biden. It also makes it harder for Donald Trump to persuade wavering Republicans and Independents that Biden is a tool of the extreme left. That--plus the smoldering ruin Trump has made of the country--should, with luck, be enough to secure the White House and a Senate majority for the Democrats.

But even Biden's Pretty Darned Progressive agenda will be no match for the catastrophic situation he and the Democrats will inherit should they win back power. The young voters who rallied around Sanders during the primaries weren't wrong that America needs root-to-branch change, not marginal reform. And that was before the killing of George Floyd focused the nation's attention on its deep and abiding racial injustices in ways not seen since the civil rights era. It was also before Trump's bungled management of the pandemic created ig30s-level mass unemployment.

These huge, intertwined crises will present Biden, if he wins, with the responsibility, and possibly the opportunity, to enact much bolder changes than he has dared contemplate. The question is, what are the big ideas he should pursue?

Certainly not the ones Sanders himself couldn't sell. Remember how, during the debates, the more Sanders argued for Medicare for All, the more its political flaws became obvious--that it would require huge new taxes on the middle class and take away private health insurance for 150 million Americans, all on the promise that most people would come out ahead?

Instead, on health care, Biden should champion a smarter big idea, one this magazine has dubbed "Medicare Prices for All": In a nutshell, the federal government would set uniform (and generally lower) prices for all medical procedures. Doing so is the single best way to discipline our increasingly costly, monopolized, predatory, and discriminatory health care...