As Medicare For All has taken center stage in the American political debate, so too have bad arguments against it. Even as poll after poll demonstrates its remarkable staying power in public opinion, politicians in both parties have remained resoundingly hostile to the idea of a universal, single-payer health care model, raising familiar concerns about costs, tax increases, feasibility, and the supposed threat to individual “choice.”

Such arguments are a direct outgrowth of a concerted (and well-funded) industry effort that aims to suffocate Medicare For All in the court of public opinion before it ever has a realistic chance of passing through Congress as legislation.

But there’s another genre of opposition, coming primarily from liberals, that claims that unlike countries like Canada or France, the United States is uniquely ineligible to achieve a single-payer model because in this country it would face determined opposition from entrenched health care industry interests. In other words, that the chances of Medicare For All legislation ever passing are so low there’s simply no point in trying.