U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who was cheated out of the Democratic Party nomination for president last year by a dishonest political organization, doesn’t believe you, your doctor, or insurance company should have control over your healthcare.
He thinks the federal government should. And not just primary control, like we now have with the Obamacare disaster, absolute control.
In recent weeks Sanders has been pushing legislation that would transform the current system of health insurance and healthcare delivery — which is being destroyed by Obamacare anyway — into a “Medicare-for-all” system, a “single-payer” scheme in which every American (and no small amount of illegal aliens, no doubt) are ‘covered’ by full-on, government-supplied insurance.
Several Democratic senators, in fact, have already signed on to Sanders’ “Medicare for All Act of 2017,” the Washington Free Beacon reports, which “would repeal Obamacare, along with most other private and public insurance, and replace it with a government-run, one-size-fits-all, centrally directed system of reimbursement for medical expenses.”
Sanders, who went on his honeymoon in the former Soviet Union, has the same opinion of health insurance that he holds for antiperspirants, the website noted: “You don’t necessarily need a choice of 23 spray deodorants or of 18 different sneakers when children are hungry in this country.”
Facepalm. Groan.
First of all, it takes an incredible amount of arrogance to think that you alone have the right to decide what the rest of the country “needs.” This is the same approach Alt-Left Democrats have taken with other issues in the past, like guns: "You don’t need a semi-automatic rifle that looks like an M-4," and so on. Considering the founders didn’t put “need” as a qualifier for the Second Amendment makes such claims meaningless and inappropriate.
But what’s worse about Sanders’ new healthcare legislation is his incredible hypocrisy, for once upon a time Sanders was very clear-minded about what a full-on "Medicare for all" government healthcare system would entail.
Again, as reported by the Washington Free Beacon, back in 1987 Sanders — then the mayor of Burlington, Vt. — understood that such single-payer schemes were just not economically tenable.
In talking about the possibility of implementing complete socialist healthcare in the U.S., Sanders, in a “Bernie Speaks with the Community” episode, said:
You want to guarantee that all people have access to health care as you do in Canada. But I think what we understand is that unless we change the funding system and the control mechanism in this country to do that — for example if we expanded Medicaid [to] everybody. Give everybody a Medicaid card — we would be spending such an astronomical sum of money that, you know, we would bankrupt the nation.
See the relevant exchange here:
https://youtu.be/NyIWpYDP-PQ
So what has changed, Bernie? Socialized, single-payer, full-on, government-controlled health care is as much of a disaster today as it was back then. It would still be prohibitively expensive, and in fact, legislators in your own home state just rejected a single-payer health system like the one Sanders is proposing. And why? Because it would cost too much. (Related: Sen. Graham on Obamacare repeal: ‘Melt Congress’ phone lines.’)
One thing that has changed since 1987 is the national debt; thanks to rampant, unrestrained, uncontrolled federal spending — mostly on mandatory entitlement programs — our debt has risen from about $3.1 trillion in 1990 to more than $20 trillion today. One hundred percent government-supplied healthcare would explode our debt even further.
Sanders has been notably vague about the details of his plan, most importantly how to pay for it. The Left-wing Urban Institute said nationally, health expenditures would climb by an astronomical $6.6 trillion between 23017 and 2026, as federal expenditures increased by $32 trillion over the same period.
“There is no way to pay for the benefits they desire without a) economy-crushing tax hikes, b) rationing, or c) some combination thereof,” the Washington Free Beacon noted.
A better plan is being offered by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. At least with his plan, the nation won't go bankrupt nearly as fast.
J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for NaturalNews.com and NewsTarget.com, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.
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