The clock is ticking on Joe Biden's decision for a running mate. POLITICO's Laura Barrn-Lpez breaks down why Stacey Abrams, Susan Rice and Gretchen Whitmer are under consideration to be Biden's No. 2.

The pandemic has been an emperor has no clothes moment when it comes to insurance companies, said Josh Orton, a Sanders delegate and member of the platform drafting committee who voted to approve the platform earlier this month. When everyone is getting thrown off of work, it becomes obvious why having your insurance connected to your employer is bonkers.

Biden has maintained his opposition to Medicare for All from the primaries and criticized the plan as too costly and unrealistic at a news conference Tuesday. And the Democratic National Committees platform committee on Monday all but ruled out formally endorsing the system in the partys 2020 plank in a lopsided 36-125 vote. The challenge for Biden will be to continue the work of a unity task force he set up with Sanders while pursuing incremental but decidedly progressive policies like auto-enrolling low-income people in the public option.

Theres no question that the pandemic has peeled back the cover on some real flaws in the American health system and made them much more stark, and it increases momentum towards a universal health care plan, said Kathleen Sebelius, the former secretary of Health and Human Services now advising the Biden campaign.

Bidens positions mark a noticeable shift from before the pandemic, when the discussion was centered more on containing health costs than expanding coverage. President Donald Trumps budgets, for example, proposed cutting billions of dollars from Medicare, despite his campaign pledge to leave the program alone. Bidens policies are also notably more ambitious than the Democrat-controlled House, where there has not been a vote on the public option, much less Medicare for All.

This is health care moonshot time, said Irwin Redlener, the founding director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University who served on the Biden campaigns public health task force earlier this year. My sense is that were not going to see a moderate, watered down, gradual series of changes. I expect a huge plan that would forever change how Americans get health care.

Still, some inside and outside the campaign would like to see bolder proposals that edge closer to a single-payer health system, believing the countrys grim circumstances will make the public more receptive to progressive ideas than some politicians believe.

Theres been a shift toward more receptivity to bigger solutions to both of our biggest problems: coverage and affordability, said Ezekiel Emanuel, the chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of Bidens public health advisory committee. But peoples thinking hasnt caught up with the dire situation were in.

The pandemic accelerated an overdue discussion about the precarious nature of a health care system centered on private coverage tied to work and the need for more government intervention, according to more than a dozen Biden health care advisers, task force members and DNC platform committee members who spoke to Politico.

Its even more clear at a time when a lot of people have lost employer-based coverage and are struggling to get by, said former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, a leading advisor to Biden.

The unity task force this month recommended several proposals that tack even further to the left. In addition to the beefed-up public option and Medicare at 60, the group called for free Covid-19 testing and treatment, bumping up the federal match for states that expand Medicaid, widening Medicare benefits to include dental, vision and hearing coverage, implementing direct government negotiation of drug prices and allowing undocumented immigrants to buy unsubsidized Obamacare coverage.

We didnt get everything we want. We didnt turn Biden into Bernie Sanders, but we were able to make enormous progress, said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), lead author of the Houses Medicare for All bill.

But while sentiment among the Democratic voter base may have moved left, the actual delegates and party establishment are more centrist than in 2016 because Sanders performed far worse in the primaries.

Chris Jennings, an Obama White House policy adviser on health care and one of Bidens picks for the task force, said Bidens victory in the primaries showed that Democrats and the general public alike prefer the public option over single-payer health care a view backed up by polling.

In our primary, we had a debate around two bold visions, and one won over the other, he said. But relative to current law, theyre both very bold.

Sarah Bianchi, a top economic and domestic policy aide to Biden when he was vice president, told Politico that Bidens health platform will look even bolder in the general election when compared with Trump and his legislative and legal efforts to kill the Affordable Care Act.

The difference is that we used to compare it to Medicare for All, so people said, Its so moderate! So incremental! she said. Now Im sure well hear about it from the other side that its a slippery slope and its socialism.

The Trump campaign has already sought to paint Biden as a puppet of the left, and the health care industry throughout the primary ran ads slamming the public option as the first step on the path toward single-payer health care.

Bidens campaign acknowledges that even its centrist proposals would be difficult to pass through Congress but is trying to use opposition from moneyed interests to boost its progressive bona fides.

The vice president is very aware that there are pieces of his agenda that certain interests may be opposed to, maybe because it cuts into their profit margins, Murthy said. Hes clear on the fact that its going to require fights, in some cases, and hes prepared to do that. He is not deterred by political pressure or industry opposition.

Arielle Kane, health care director at the Progressive Policy Institute who crafted health policy for Michael Bloombergs campaign and has given advice to the Biden campaign, applauds this new, more aggressive rhetoric.

My critique of Biden [during the primary] was that he was mainly focused on upholding what Obama did instead of moving the needle, she said. But my sense is, that has changed. The combination of a public health crisis, him having secured the nomination and Bernies influence I feel theyre now receptive to hearing really progressive ideas and know that just defending and building on the ACA is not going to meet the moment.

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This is health care moonshot time: Pandemic pulls Biden, Dems further left - POLITICO