Democrats’ Latest Socialist Scheme: Medicare for None
‘[W]e’re continuing to watch as our friends across the aisle take big steps in their party’s continued march toward the far, far left. As I understand, they’ll soon introduce the Senate version of the radical health care proposal that I’ve come to call “Medicare for None.” It’s only the latest installment in the steady drumbeat of calls for socialist central planning that we’ve been hearing from our Democratic colleagues as of late.’
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) made the following remarks on the Senate floor regarding bills from Washington Democrats that would force all Americans into a government-run healthcare system:
“Now, on a completely different matter, we’re continuing to watch as our friends across the aisle take big steps in their party’s continued march toward the far, far left. As I understand, they’ll soon introduce the Senate version of the radical health care proposal that I’ve come to call ‘Medicare for None.’ It’s only the latest installment in the steady drumbeat of calls for socialist central planning that we’ve been hearing from our Democratic colleagues as of late.
“Earlier this year, we saw the Speaker of the House declare her top priority is the ‘Democrat Politician Protection Act,’ an effort to literally rewrite the rules of free speech and American elections and give political campaigns a big dose of taxpayer dollars. All so that the outcomes of our political process could be more to Democrats’ liking. We’ve seen all but a tiny handful of our Democratic colleagues unable to reject an absurdly intrusive and mind-bogglingly expensive plan to forcibly remodel the U.S. economy and American families’ lives until they’re sufficiently ‘green.’
“And now, perhaps as soon as this week, the latest new scheme will make landfall in the Senate. I’m sure it will grab a new round of headlines. But under the Cadillac hood, it will only offer the same old push-mower engine. The same tired, debunked logic that Washington D.C. knows best and the American people can’t be trusted to decide what’s best for themselves and their families. That tired, old engine cannot power the kind of health care that Americans deserve.
“The legislation my colleagues want to brand as ‘Medicare for All’ hollows out the actual Medicare program that our seniors rely on until the only thing left is the label. Then it takes that label and slaps it on a brand-new, untested, government-run plan that every single American would be forced into whether they like it or not. In fact, competing private insurance policies -- like the ones that 180 million Americans currently use -- would be banned outright.
“And for the privilege of having their existing Medicare or their existing employer-provided plans ripped away from them -- by the same Washington D.C. ‘experts’ who brought us Obamacare’s sky-high premiums, deductibles, out-of-pocket costs, and dysfunction -- for that privilege, the American people would have to pick up an historic $32 trillion tab. And that’s just the rough estimate for the first 10 years.
“That’s more than the federal government has spent on everything over the past eight years combined. It’s so much that even senior Democrats aren’t claiming to know how it would be paid for. And that price is so steep that even left-leaning analysts are quietly admitting that the tax burden is virtually certain to land on the shoulders of the middle class.
“Here is the Washington Post, verbatim -- quote -- ‘Medicare-for-all in particular would require tax hikes on middle class families.’ That’s the Washington Post. To give you a sense of scale for this nightmare, one think-tank has calculated that ‘doubling all federal individual and corporate income taxes’ -- doubling all those tax collections -- ‘would be insufficient to fully finance the plan.’
“Double what Americans send to the IRS in income taxes. Take away all the competition and choice in the health insurance market. The failures and foibles of Obamacare -- painful as they are for so many families -- would likely just be the warm-up act for this socialist bonanza. And apparently this is what my Democratic colleagues believe will pass for a political winner.
“I’ll give them this: with Republicans standing for preserving what works and fixing what doesn’t, for reducing tax rates instead of shooting them sky-high, and for strengthening the employer-sponsored and Medicare Advantage plans that American families actually rely on instead of snatching those plans away, my Democratic friends are certainly working hard to paint a clear contrast.”
Related Issues: Senate Democrats, Health Care
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