Time October 17, 2019
Jamie Ducharme

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar called Medicare for All a “utopian” and “simplistic” approach to health care that would actually become “Medicare for None” during an interview at the the TIME 100 Health Summit on Thursday.

“The reason we’re seeing the attractiveness of simplistic notions like Medicare for All is that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) made a lot of promises. It didn’t deliver on them,” Azar said. But, he argued, most Americans “aren’t beguiled by utopian visions of healthcare. The American people actually take a fairly incremental approach to healthcare,” preferring to gradually improve current systems rather than overhauling them entirely.

Azar — who runs the federal department that oversees, among other offices,...

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