Sen. Bernie Sanders will hold an online town-hall meeting next Tuesday regarding his single-payer health-care legislation. Mr. Sanders calls it “Medicare for All.” But the text of the bill itself reveals a more accurate name: Medicare for None. The Orwellian way in which Mr. Sanders characterizes his plan speaks to the larger problem facing the left, whose plans for health care remain so radical that speaking of them honestly would prompt instant repulsion from most voters.

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?