[music playing]

Katie Sanders: Hey, everybody. Welcome to What the Fact. I'm Katie, and this is Aaron. And we are editors with Politifact.

Aaron Sharockman: Every week, we sort out fact from fiction on the campaign trail and also in your news feeds. This week, we're talking about an issue that you've likely heard a lot about. It's called Medicare for All.

The Democratic candidates for president are debating whether or not to replace Obamacare with this new health care solution. A lot of people are talking about it. But let's be honest, I'm not quite sure everyone knows what it means, means for them, and means for this country.

We're gonna get into a fact check about who wants Medicare for All. But before you decide if you really want it yourself, you should probably know a little bit more about it. So Newsy is going to walk you through it.

Man: Health care is a major political issue. And Democrats and Republicans are proposing a variety of ways to change our current system. We're going to explain some of the key terms to help you better understand what options are on the table.

Single payer health care means everyone gets their insurance through the same program. Typically, that system is run by the government and funded by taxes. Single payer insurance can also put the government in charge of setting prices for health care services. That's the way Medicare, which covers people 65 and older, is run today. The government runs the health insurance program and negotiates with hospitals and doctors to set prices.

Socialized health care is sometimes mistakenly conflated with a single payer system. The term socialized medicine refers not only to who pays a patient's bills, but also who owns the hospitals and pays the care providers. In most cases, that would be the government. The VA is an example of a socialized health care program. All veterans get their insurance through the government. And they receive care at VA hospitals where the government owns the buildings and employs the staff.

Medicare for All is a term being used by several democratic presidential candidates. With Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders being the biggest proponents. As The New York Times puts it, "Medicare for All is kind of like a brand name version of a single payer system." Both Warren and Sanders's plans would eliminate private and employer-sponsored health insurance in exchange for a single government run insurance system that everyone would be enrolled in.

Public option is another key phrase in the mix. This type of system would let anyone sign up for government-run health insurance. The program would likely be similar to Medicare, just without the eligibility requirements. But a public option would be just that, an option. People would be allowed to stick with private health insurance if they wanted to.

And there's one health care term that looks at the big picture, universal coverage. It just means that everyone would have health insurance. This is the ultimate goal for most candidates. But what politicians still need to figure out is which type of health care system will help us get there.

[music playing]

Aaron Sharockman: All right, so that's a little bit about the health care system and specifically, this plan called Medicare for All. Now, Joe Biden is a Democrat running for president, the former vice president. He opposes Medicare for All, the plan that's really being supported by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. He actually says a majority of Democrats are with him.

Joe Biden: The fact is, that right now, the vast majority of Democrats do not support Medicare for All.

Aaron Sharockman: We heard that and of course, wanted to fact check. What did we find?

Katie Sanders: So the polling that we found portrays Biden's point in a misleading light. He's really glossing over the fact that a lot of Democrats do support Medicare for All. But it depends on what they're told about it.

So we looked at the Kaiser Family Foundation polling from a year ago. And a lot has happened since then. But they found that when you talk about the need to pay for it with higher taxes or that there might be delays in services, a majority do not support that version of Medicare for All.

But when you talk about extending coverage to everybody in the United States and how you might eliminate out-of-pocket expenses, that kind of thing, a majority support it. So like I said, the polling on that is a year old. But it does undermine Biden's point just a bit.

Aaron Sharockman: There's a ton of polling on the specific question. It really matters how you ask it. This is the same thing we saw, by the way, when we talked about Obamacare. Polling not only shifts over time. But it shifts depending on how the question is asked.

In this case, and probably the one thing I would say that defends Joe Biden a little bit, is when people were asked, basically you had one choice. Could you expand Obamacare? Would you do Medicare for All? Would you do something else?

No one really got a majority in those questions when they were forced to pick one. But again, it doesn't mean they don't like what's called Medicare for All. They just maybe like something a little better.

Katie Sanders: And I do think that Biden has a point here, even though he's overplaying the Democratic support overall, in that when Democrats are presented with Medicare for All versus adding a public option, there tends to be more support for the public option than Medicare for All. Again, there's a lot of nuance here. And that is not captured by what Biden said on the debate stage. So we rated his claim mostly false.

Aaron Sharockman: All right, mostly false for Joe Biden. If you love nuance, you're in the right place. You can see all of our fact checks about Medicare for All and health care at Politifact.com. Until next time, I'm Aaron, and this is Katie.

[music playing]