Last year Bernie Sanders was the lone single-payer supporter in the Senate. Now there are sixteen, including most of that chamber’s Democratic presidential hopefuls. And 120 House members — a majority of the Democrats — have hopped aboard the single-payer bandwagon. Even the likes of Warren Buffett, Al Gore, and Jimmy Carter have come around.

That’s rare good news in the age of Trump, and gratifying progress for groups that have kept the single-payer flame burning.

But the glimmer of success has also awakened powerful foes. Single payer can only deliver the goods — equal, affordable, excellent care — by de-commercializing health care. That means abolishing private insurers, leashing pharma, proscribing investor ownership of hospitals and other health facilities, and rooting out the incentives that push nonprofit hospitals to act like for-profits.