Last September, the socialist Mr. Sanders and 16 Democratic colleagues introduced what they style the Medicare for All Act. Section 901(a) of the bill explicitly states that “no benefits shall be available under Title XVIII of the Social Security Act”—that is, Medicare—“for any item or service furnished beginning on or after the effective date” of the new single-payer program.

While Mr. Sanders claims that his bill would extend Medicare to all, it would instead create an entirely new program while borrowing the Medicare name. Case in point: Section 701(d) of the Sanders bill would liquidate the existing Medicare trust funds, transferring their entire proceeds into a new “Universal Medicare Trust Fund.”

If the roughly 59 million Medicare enrollees have qualms about giving up their current coverage, at least they’ll have company. The bill would also end Medicaid (except for long-term care), the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, federal employee coverage, and Tricare for the military. And it would prohibit any insurer, including any employer, from covering benefits and services provided through the government system.

Out of nearly 330 million Americans, the only ones who would retain their current coverage are the 2.2 million who receive services from the Indian Health Service and the 9.3 million who get it from the Veterans Administration. Is Mr. Sanders’s decision to preserve VA coverage—in which, as we learned in 2014, veterans died while waiting months for treatment—suggestive of the type of care he has in mind for all Americans?

Selling a bill that would abolish Medicare as “Medicare for All” takes some chutzpah—akin to the promise that if you like your health-care plan, you can keep it. Here’s hoping that the American people, having been subjected once to the disastrous consequences of the left’s reassuring but deceitful rhetoric on health care, don’t get fooled again.