A strange phenomenon has appeared in the US debate over universal health care: a big majority favors a well-known reform — Medicare for All — as the pundits, insurance and pharma lobbyists, and political insiders denied it (since 1992!), then since 2016 opposed it and all of sudden want to redefine it.

The appearance of Medicare for All in the New York Times just before the New Year — as the subject of an in-depth Robert Pear story on December 29, the type of work he consistently devotes to the hottest health care issues in Washington, but rarely has done so about MfA — and in a letters to the editor special on December 30, featuring readers’ remedies for the health care system, “not surprisingly,” said the Times, Medicare for All “topped the list.”

The Pear story presented the first mainstream journalist examination of Medicare for All in relation to Medicare Advantage, the commercial insurance plans sold as Part C of Medicare, which are the latest hugely profitable windfall carve out of traditional Medicare for insurers, who market them to healthy seniors to fuel their double-digit growth projections for these products. In return for an additional payment from the Medicare SMI Fund per enrollee, insurers like Humana, United Health, CIGNA, and Kaiser restrict seniors to a limited set of providers and provide more comprehensive benefits than Part B plans — typically vision, hearing aids, and dental — some incorporating Part D prescription drug benefits, and lower or no co-pay and deductibles.