Bernie Sanders sealed Medicare for All’s place in the popular imagination with his 2016 presidential run. Ever since, its popularity has continued to grow: multiple recent polls show that 70 percent of Americans support the single-payer policy, which would cover all American residents through a comprehensive, national insurance plan.

This is bad news for establishment Democrats, who have a vested interest in maintaining the market-based system we have today. In an attempt to counter Medicare for All, they’ve rallied around a less radical approach that will preserve the private insurance industry and keep their donors happy — the “public option.”

The public option is a pretty self-explanatory idea: basically, the government would allow people to “buy in” to public health insurance, whether that be through Medicare, Medicaid, or a public plan on the Affordable Care Act market. Proponents of the public option love to argue that people are happy with their private plans, and that what they really want is — in the words of Tim Kaine — “more choices, not less.”