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As Democrats debate how best to expand health coverage, Tim Kaine and Michael Bennet are trying to ensure the party doesn’t swing too far to the left. The Virginia and Colorado senators next week will reintroduce their “Medicare X” plan, which would create a new public option for health insurance — an idea that was originally part of Obamacare but was jettisoned for being seen, at the time, as too progressive. (Levine, 3/29)

What was once seen as a long-shot pitch from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., during his 2016 presidential campaign is now a proposal for a single-payer health care plan that at least four of his Senate colleagues also running for the party’s 2020 nomination supported in the last Congress. The issue is driving the national political health care debate. But to succeed in enacting a single-payer system such as the “Medicare for All” plan Sanders backs, liberals would need a grassroots movement propelling the effort and would have to work out complicated policy details affecting nearly one-fifth of the nation’s economy. (McIntire, 3/31)

Speaking at the University of Miami’s Watsco Center for the annual Business of Health Care Conference on Friday, a panel of trade group leaders representing the nation’s hospitals, doctors, nurses, health insurers and healthcare financial managers agreed that America’s healthcare system needs to be simpler to navigate and more affordable. But they all disagreed that a universal expansion of Medicare, the national health insurance program for Americans 65 and older, would accomplish those objectives. (Chang, 3/29)