President Trump wrote an op-ed column in USA Today this morning. I certainly didn’t expect this — and he even used words like “eviscerate.” I’m impressed!
Regardless who really wrote the column, the piece attacked ‘Medicare for All,’ a proposal put forward by Bernie Sanders and apparently endorsed by 123 Democrats in the House (H.R.676) and 15 in the Senate (S. 1804). That’s fine, but Congressmen and Senators co-sponsor a lot of bills. If this is a major initiative by the Democratic Party they need to do a better job getting the message out. I don’t hear much talk about it, which I expect is because the party doesn’t actually support it.
Trump nonetheless brands Democrats “radical socialists who want to model America’s economy after Venezuela.” He claims that a single-payer healthcare system will effectively destroy life in America as we know it. It’s an “extreme, anti-senior, anti-choice and anti-consumer proposal for government-run health care.”
The Democrats’ plan also would mean the end of choice for seniors over their own health care decisions. Instead, Democrats would give total power and control over seniors’ health care decisions to the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. – Donald Trump
This is fear-mongering plain and simple. I haven’t examined the ‘Medicare for All’ proposal and can’t comment on its specific merits or deficiencies — but I can say without any doubt that other countries do quite well under their single-payer systems. This includes the leading industrialized capitalist nations, not just “radical socialist” ones. If these countries can provide quality health care — for all — we certainly can!
I discussed this last year in The Abominable Health Care Plan. I compared health care in the United States, Canada, France, Britain and Cuba. It’s an eye-opener. I hope you’ll check it out.
It will only cost 4 Trillion a year. That is more than the US brings in a year, 3.5 Trillion. So all tax revenue will have to more than double just to break even. Long waiting periods like in Canada,
I don’t know what the total cost would be, but if we followed the models of other industrialized capitalist countries like Canada, France and Great Britain the cost per capita would drop substantially while service and accessibility would increase. Our system is distorted, bloated and inefficient. It’s a for-profit system concerned first and foremost with shareholder returns. The data show other countries are doing far better than us. The U.S. ranks #37 in healthcare while France ranks #1. (Kaiser Family Foundation)
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