I like this bit from Dean Baker:
The Washington Post Calls Medicare "Radical"
To be more precise, it called offering a Medicare type government-run health plan to all Americans a "potentially radical idea." It's not clear why extending a 40 year-old program on a voluntary basis should be viewed as a radical proposition.
It's very clear why a program like Medicare-for-All is viewed as a radical proposition: Because the media says it's a radical proposition. If Medicare's restriction to the 65-and-up set were treated as a bizarre incongruity by the nation's press, politicians proposing to expand it to all ages would be seen as fixing an inexplicable quirk of the original legislation, not trying to drop an iron curtain across Nebraska. Since the press suggests that Medicare-for-All is a radical idea, however, it's treated as one, and its utter obviousness is deemphasized.
