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GOP health bill nears demise, but Democrats’ unity masks their own dangerous divide (512 hits)

WASHINGTON
Democrats showed uncommon unity in fighting Republican efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, and it appeared to be working Monday as two more GOP senators said they can’t support the latest version. But Democrats’ discipline masks a deep and fundamental divide within the party that could complicate efforts to gain ground in the 2018 election and beyond.

Even as Republicans fight among themselves to dismantle the law, the liberal wing of the Democratic party is aggressively pushing Democrats to embrace a single payer system, in which the government pays for health care rather than private insurance companies. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont who has long championed the effort and made it a key plank of his 2016 presidential bid, plans to file legislation calling for “Medicare for all” after the Obamacare repeal debate has ended.

“I think we should join the rest of the industrialized world in guaranteed health care,” Sanders said in an interview, insisting he’s first “working overtime” to help quash the Republican effort to erase former President Barack Obama’s signature legislative effort.

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