Seems Democrats have very little of substance on their party platform, but one big topic, for many Democrats, is another shot at national healthcare, called “Medicare for All”. I’m not sure exactly what that means at this point, and I’m also not sure that the Democrats know either. According to The Economist,
First, though, Democrats need to decide what Medicare for all actually means. The details of health policy resemble brain surgery; the appeal of a slogan is that nobody need bother with the stultifying details. Some Democratic politicians and left-of-centre think-tanks have put forward more modest proposals under the aegis of Medicare for all. They include: allowing more people to qualify for Medicaid (government-provided insurance for the poorest), lowering the age requirements for Medicare and introducing a so-called public option, a state-run insurer to compete with existing private ones. These are more accurately labelled as “Medicare for more”, says Sara Collins of the Commonwealth Fund, a health think-tank. The virtue of these ideas is that they are incrementalist and would require less federal spending than a fully fledged single-payer system. Their chief shortcoming, as Robert Blendon, a professor of health policy at Harvard puts it, is that “terms like public option don’t raise the blood pressure of the public”.
As a result none of these proposals has received as much attention as the detailed plan put forward by Mr Sanders, which goes the full monty. Medicare would become the single payer of all insurance claims. It would be free at the point of use. Premiums, deductibles and other payments would be nearly eliminated. It would also up-end the health-care system by doing away with employer-sponsored insurance. The majority (56%) of working-age Americans are enrolled in these schemes; 71% of those covered by them say they are content. Unlike the other Medicare-for-all pitches, if you like your plan, you most certainly cannot keep it.
To fund all this, federal spending would need to increase by an estimated $32.6trn over ten years. If the government used its power to reduce the costs of drugs and of administration this could, according to an estimate by the Mercatus Centre, a think-tank, result in $2trn less health spending overall otherwise…
Efforts in Vermont, Mr Sanders’s own home state, stalled once it became clear that an 11.5% surtax on payrolls and premiums up to 9.5% of income would be needed to fund single-payer insurance. Public support drops sharply once voters are reminded that taxes would have to rise to pay for Medicare for all.
And Medicare, as it is run now, is certainly not free at the point of use for most of us. At least for now, full-blown national health care is unlikely to become a reality in the United States, nor should it, in my opinion. This is what PragerU says about it:
And here is just part of what The White House has to say in their “Fact Sheets”:
- Democrats are claiming seniors would not lose benefits under “Medicare for All.”
- In reality, popular Medicare Advantage plans enjoyed by more than 20 million seniors would be outlawed under the Democrat plan.
- Congressional Democrats are telling American seniors “Medicare for All” is not a threat, yet their radical plan comes with a price tag that would jeopardize seniors’ benefits.
- Their plan rations healthcare with additional and stricter government price controls.
- Their plan requires large payment cuts to doctors and hospitals, leading to hospital closures, fewer doctors, and less care for seniors.
- This would not be the first time the Democrats abandoned our seniors, having cut Medicare spending by $800 billion…
In a telling show of his lack of respect for American taxpayers, Senator Schumer did not even deny their plan would use taxpayer money to fund Government healthcare for illegal aliens.
Looks like another power grab to me. It sounds good – particularly if you are young, and your health care needs are modest – but the costs are politically minimized, while the loss of benefits and rationing of services are inevitable, just as they are in Canada, which has expanded the legality of privately provided and paid health services. This video by Stephen Crowder (himself a Canadian) shows what it can be like to get health care in Canada:
In my mind, there are several serious considerations:
- Cost. This means cost to provide services (government) and funding (taxes).
- Rationing of services. Who decides what and when they are provided, or not.
- Freedom of choice. Traded for equal access to all? No preference allowed based on income? Or as some Canadians believe, it isn’t “fair” that people could spend money to get superior care.
- Wait times. With rationed services (not enough equipment, beds, or physicians), how long are we willing to wait to get a needed operation, sit in the Emergency Room, obtain an MRI, or even a blood test?
Your thoughts?
Stella's Place 
Seniors would suffer more. No way will seniors get the care they do now when the primary consideration becomes cost, AND they are competing with illegal aliens for benefits.
It also boils down to a vote. I think that the Democrats feel much more assured that they have the vote of the illegal aliens and those who favor socialized medicine than they do my vote as a senior American. Also, statistically speaking, my working years and contribution to taxes are over, or coming to a close.
We aren’t living breathing constituents to any of them, we are in the win or lose column on a spreadsheet.
LikeLiked by 1 person
My sister lives in Canada and has always praised the Canadian health care system because they don’t have to pay anything to see a doctor. My sister now is terminal. Days ago, they said she had about two weeks left. Her husband said there are no beds in hospice. I guess she is on a waiting list. I don’t think she can wait.
LikeLiked by 1 person
So sorry to hear about your sister, mom. Prayers are up. Is there anything that might be done for her here in the U.S.? We are allowed to try experimental drugs now.
Had that been available for Ma Soeur, she may have lived, who knows?
Please let us know if there is any way we might help.
God Bless.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You can pray for her soul. Pray that Jesus can reach her and that she responds. She has always been a liberal and is very negative about any kind of religion.
There is nothing that can help her heal. This evidently started several years ago and she didn’t go to the doctor. But, there is no healing it, just meds that can make it less painful. Unfortunately she didn’t get any of those I don’t think. What she has is Myeloma, Plasmocytoma. I only know what I found on the Internet about it. Nasty business. My BIL is emailing me, but just a few short sentences each time. I am not pressing him because he is alone as far as I know and is spending time at the hospital unless he has made arrangements for her to come home.
LikeLike
Prayers continue Aus. 🙏🏼❤️
LikeLiked by 1 person
Having already royally effed up healthcare in the US thanks to Obamacare, Dems decide to try again.
How about we keep drug companies from jacking up prices and the Dems all sod off and stop making things worse?
(Insulin costs went up recently. I’m not happy. Healthcare is a touchy subject for me right now.)
LikeLiked by 3 people
‘Sod off’…that’s my Nana’s parlez.
Yup, not like insulin is still under patent or that those Chinese/Indian plants that have been making it for decades suddenly raised their prices. Granted the number of diabetics is rising around the world but it ain’t like it costs that much to ramp up production by the myriad Asian plants that pump it out.
I’m on metformin (local redneck doc keeps on trying to sell me ‘methformin’) but I’ve been seeing drug companies trying to raise the rather low price. It’s been available as a generic for over twenty years (it was used in England and Canada decades before it was approved here) but those Big Pharma guys are always trying to find a way to legally say: “Give it up, M&^%$#@, yo monies o’ yo’ lifes”.
LikeLike
An example is Senator Joe Manchin D (W.Va) daughter. Her little drug company developed the Opdiod recovery drug, and injector …….She was making big bucks before the public found out who she was……
LikeLiked by 2 people
Considering how much the Democrats have made off of all facets of the War on Drugs it’s no wonder she worked a way to get a cut.
I particularly like the way we’re all being pushed to carry Narcan so that we can rescue some junkie that OD’d. Screw that, I’m all for giving ‘opiod abusers’ all of the free 100% they want to help them find peace.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Sod off ” was the nice version, czar. It only gets nastier from there.
The drug companies want more money. Rather than deal with greedy drug companies, idiot politicians in this country come up with stupid plans like this. Can’t interfere with the lobbyists paychecks – that would interfere with kick backs to the pols.
Thing is, I would wager that if I were some deadbeat relying on the gov’t, instead of working and paying into my employers plan, this wouldn’t be an issue. I would get it for free, courtesy of the rest of the country. 😡
LikeLike
Read up on: the Prescription Drug Users Fee Act, it’ll tell you a lot.
LikeLike
Will it make my blood pressure worse? At this rate, insulin will not be the only medicine I’m on.
LikeLike
Depends on how much you really want to know who controls the FDA and why. I’ve ranted on it before but folks seem to put the subject into the ‘Things Too Hard to Do’ box.
LikeLike
My BIL just called. My sister died last night. They had finally moved her to Hospice. He said it was a really nice place. He is really upset, of course, but he said something that made me curious. He said they were finally able to give her the pain meds she needed.
LikeLiked by 3 people
I’m really sorry, but knowing that she was suffering means that she is now at peace. I hope that she made her peace with God.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, I hope so, too.
LikeLiked by 1 person
So sorry aus. I have been praying for her, and your family. I prayed the Divine Mercy Chaplet for her, and I trust in the infinite and loving mercy of Christ.
My deepest condolences to you.
LikeLike
Thank you. ❤
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m sorry to hear that, aus.
LikeLike
❤
LikeLike
(((Aus)))
LikeLike
My paranoid side sees this as the way the Democrat’s most vociferous minority supporters can reach their goals of killing off a certain portion of the population they hold as responsible for their lack of achievement. In a more rounded approach I’d like to ask if anyone actually believes that the apportionment of the even more finite healthcare business wouldn’t, under Rat rule as using their legislative past as prologue, wouldn’t have some ‘excepted’ apportionment?
It’s the Rat’s way of co-opting the entire medical-industrial complex, some 20% of tbe US economy and the arbiter between life and death…ignoring a portion of the Democrat’s urban base. They’ have our money and our lives in their clammy hands.
LikeLiked by 3 people