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Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Kamala Harris, D-Calif. - two prominent women thought to be potential 2020 presidential contenders - have both announced their support for Sanders' "Medicare for All" plan. The senators have said they intend to cosponsor the legislation.
And former Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., seen as the Affordable Care Act's architect, told NBC News last week that "the time has come" for single-payer.
With the ObamaCare debate continuing in the U.S., popularity for the European-style health care model of single-payer has gained more traction, especially among more progressive Democrats.
Some states have already tried - and failed - to implement such a system, in which the government serves as the sole payer for health care costs. Like the current health care law and recent GOP proposals to overhaul it, single-payer plans are controversial.
Here is a look at what single-payer health care is, and how it compares to other models.
What is single-payer health care?
The very term "single-payer health care" denotes that only one entity bears the financial responsibility of health care - the government. Under this system, the government would solely be responsible for covering health care costs.
"The basic idea of single-payer is to cover everybody with a single government program, and that program would basically cover all the doctors and hospitals," Dr. Adam Gaffney told Fox News.
Gaffney is an instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and practices pulmonary and critical care medicine at Cambridge Health Alliance.
What's the argument for single-payer?
Gaffney, who works with the progressive advocacy group Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), contended that single-payer systems give the consumer more choices when it comes to choosing a doctor or hospital.
"It gives people real choice when it comes to health care. People don't really care about that choice of an insurance plan," Gaffney said. "They want to be able to go to the doctor they know or trust, and they want to be able to go to the hospital that's convenient or has the services they need."
"Under our current system of insurance networks, of out-of-network billing, of high co-payments, people can often not go and receive the care they need," he added.
A slight majority of Americans currently support a single-payer system, according to a June poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation. The 53 percent in support of single-payer is slightly higher than in previous years, the non-profit found.
"There's a rise in energy and passion around this," Gaffney said, attributing the increased support - in part - to the 2016 presidential campaign of Sanders, who was widely popular among younger voters. Sanders heavily campaigned on a Medicare for All platform.
What's the argument against it?
Joel White, president of the Council for Affordable Health Coverage, expressed opposition to single payer because of the "devil in the details."
"In other countries, we have seen single-payer shows us that putting more control of health care into the hands of politicians is bad medicine," White told Fox News. "Costs and taxes will rise, or patient access will be severely diminished - turning America's medical system into a third-world product."
Comment: Let's remember, Americans are already paying more than anyone else in the developed world, and are receiving some of the worst healthcare outcomes:
The U.S. has the most expensive, least effective health care system
This is healthcare? US medical system kills 400K hospital patients every year
And Tanner called the idea of single-payer a "utopia" - meaning, "there is no such thing as a health care system anywhere in the world that provides unlimited care to everybody." "I want people to understand that there is a trade-off involved," Tanner said. "You can have widespread care that provides benefits that are well beyond the current insurance system, but that doesn't have co-payments or deductibles. Or you can have low cost. But you can't have both."
The idea of the government fully taking over health care also doesn't sit well with some people, Tanner said.
"The government hasn't done a very good job with the health care system it already runs," he said. "Medicare is nearly $50 trillion in debt, there [are] still all sorts of problems with the VA system, Medicaid provides coverage that is barely better than being uninsured. So the government's track record is not very successful."
Comment: Fair point. The psychopaths running the US government have already made a real mess of everything else, so letting them take control of a single-payer system could result in Americans being worse off than they already are. So, what to do?
What about ObamaCare?
A common misconception is that ObamaCare provides universal coverage. Unlike a single-payer program, the Affordable Care Act does not provide universal health insurance coverage because approximately 28 million people are still uninsured.
For example, a government could require all citizens to purchase health insurance - including through a marketplace like ObamaCare - but it's not single-payer unless the government is also the sole provider of health care payments.
In fact, according to a chart released by PNHP, ObamaCare has more similarities to the failed Republican American Health Care Act (AHCA) than to a single-payer program.
Both the Affordable Care Act and the AHCA allow for insurance companies to have some control over a person's choice of health care provider, and both allow insurers to control premiums and deductible costs.
How much would it cost?
There is widespread disagreement over how much it would cost to implement a single-payer health care system. Supporters say it would cut excessive administrative costs compared to those incurred by private insurers. But critics, including most Republicans, warn that the savings would be less dramatic than expected -- and the system would cost too much.
Sanders estimates the price tag for his plan would be about $1.38 trillion per year for the first 10 years, based on an analysis conducted by an economist at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
But other experts have projected higher costs -- anywhere from $2.5 trillion a year, according to the nonpartisan Urban Institute, to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget's estimate of $2.8 trillion a year.
Has the U.S. tried to implement single-payer?
A bill introduced by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., would establish a Medicare for All program to provide Americans with health care, including medically-necessary care, emergency care, primary care and prevention, dietary therapies, prescription drugs, mental health services, dental services and vision care.
The legislation currently has 117 cosponsors - the largest number of House Democrats to sponsor a single-payer bill to date, Gaffney said. No Republicans have signed on to the bill.
Regardless of support among congressional Democrats and liberal progressives, single-payer systems haven't been successful at the state-level so far in terms of implementation.
California Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, a Democrat, was forced to shelve a single-payer plan after the $400 billion price tag was revealed. Vermont, too, decided to forego a single-player plan in 2014 because of cost.
Dr. Harold Pollack, a University of Chicago professor who has written extensively on health care policy, said he does not believe that single-payer can be achieved at the state level without the federal government as "an eager partner."
"The impact [of single-payer] will be very different on different people," Pollack said, adding that the "big failure of the American health care system" is that the government doesn't currently leverage low prices.
Sanders told Vermont Public Radio last month that he understands moving to a true single-payer system would take time to implement and proposed lowering the age of Medicare eligibility to 55 years of age.
"That's one way to phase it in," he said.
In California, the bill is not technically dead as legislators work in sessions. And with Sanders expected to unveil his much-anticipated plan this month, a push for single-payer could be revived yet again.
First of all, they love to talk about the cost. "It will cost billions, and will lead to a tax raise!" - they scream, in apocalyptic tone. What are they not telling you? That the CURRENT system already cost billions. In fact, the current system costs a lot more than the single player system, so we are talking about a net saving of some billions. Funny how things change, when given propper context, huh? And yes, there will be a slight tax increase, but that increase will be COMPENSATED BY THE FACT that nobody will *need to* pay a private health insurance any longer, so again we are talking about a net saving per capita for the vast majority of Americans. But Fox News won't tell you that, they will just scream "THE COST!". The cost is precisely the biggest argument in favor of single payer! Nations like Australia, France, Canada and Italy have single payer and spend almost half of the United States on healthcare per capita (I said per capita, so the size of each countries population is already weighed).
Second, they like to whine about how in a single paying system there will need to be a government selection of who gets their procedure first. That is true! What are they not telling you? In the present system, such selection ALREADY OCCURS AND IS BASED ON INCOME: those who can afford, get their procedure - no matter how important (could be cancer, could be a nose jobe). In a single payer system, the selection is based on how grave the situation is: serious conditions are dealt with first, and elective procedures may have to wait. That's what happens in Canada, Australia. So the waiting list in single payer/civilized nations is for ELECTIVE procedures, while in the US, there are 45.000 deaths anually due to lack of health coverage (study: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/new-study-finds-45000-deaths-annually-linked-to-lack-of-health-coverage/). So the question is: do you think people health care should be prioiritized according to people's need or according to the size of their bank acount?
And what's up with this silly libertarian talking point about "government control"? it's an empty talking point. You don't see the Danish, the Dutch or the Swedish complaining... it's not like the president will run the health system personaly, it will be profesionally run by doctors.
Also, it's hilarious that libertarians like to claim those who are for single payer "don't understand basic economics" when it is a basic principle of insurance that the larger the group, the lower the cost per capita will be because the risk gets dissolved. Even private health insurance companies will admit that. If you hire individual coverage for yourself alone, it will cost more per capita than if you join a hundred of, say, your coworkers and hire the same coverage, but collectively. What is the largest group possible? of course, the entire country.
Go check who finances the campaign of the politicians who are fierce opposers of single payers (both Republican and Democrats) and also who finances many mainstream media outlets: it's the private "health" industry itself. Geez, I wonder why Fox News, Hillary, Obama, CNN, Republicans, MSNBC all agree that single payer is bad despite it being objectively and concretely better.