As the Republican effort to do something about the disaster known as Obamacare ramps up, former Democratic presidential contender Sen. Bernie Sanders is ramping up his own efforts to get more people to support legislation he wrote that calls for full-on socialized medicine.
He has said that Americans are just clamoring for his plan, which — if ever passed — will create a 100-percent, government-controlled health care system very similar to the one Great Britain uses (which is expensive and produces far lower favorable outcomes when compared to the U.S. system).
Stat News noted:
Sanders’ plan, released [last week], would have the government finance coverage now paid for by a mix of employers, their workers, public plans and people in the individual insurance market. He’s not given details of the likely cost or how, exactly, he’d pay for it.
“You mean because the people in this country want to move toward a Medicare-for-all system, that is divisive? I think in a democracy, we should be doing what the American people want,” he said in an Associated Press interview recently, as reported by Stat News.
“Guaranteeing health care as a right is important to the American people not just from a moral and financial perspective; it also happens to be what the majority of the American people want,” he wrote recently in The New York Times, the site further noted.
That really depends on how you look at what he’s saying, and how popularity for his plan is measured. Overall, public sentiment for Sanders’ plan is a very mixed bag, at best. (Related: Socialist Bernie Sanders now pushing full-on government health care he once said would “bankrupt the nation.”)
Recently, the Kaiser Foundation, which researches medical issues and trends, reported there has been a “modest increase” in support for socialized medicine or, as Sanders’ plan calls for, “Medicare for All.” But what is most noteworthy about the Kaiser Foundation findings is that public opinion about Sanders’ plan is “malleable” — that is, it changes, as in drops, when respondents are presented with arguments against his proposal that are no doubt going to come up during legislative debate.
In July, Kaiser’s tracking poll found 53 percent in favor of making all Americans get their health insurance coverage from the government, while 43 percent were opposed. But when presented with the reality that taxes would have to dramatically increase in order to pay the trillions of dollars in anticipated new health care expenditures a full-on government-run system would cost, opposition climbed to 60 percent. In addition, when told that former President Obama’s signature health care “reform” would be replaced as a result of Sanders’ new legislation, a slight majority also balked (though I can’t understand why, given the disaster Obamacare has become).
Other polling continued to show mixed results. For instance, respondents were more or less divided evenly in an AP-NORC Center survey in January; 39 percent were opposed to having all Americans purchase insurance through the government, while 38 percent were in favor. But again, support tanked when respondents were informed of the massive increase in government spending that would need to occur under such a system.
A Quinnipiac University poll, meanwhile, found that a Medicare-for-all plan was supported 51-38 in August, but that survey did not include questions about what such a system would potentially cost.
In his Times piece, Sanders cited an Economist/YouGov survey in April that said a clear majority 60-23 percent — support his socialized medicine plan. Once more, he was being disingenuous because that poll also did not address the cost of his plan and used an opt-in online panel that was recruited via Internet advertising, which has been criticized by some experts because there’s no way to ensure a random sample.
Plus, many surveys in the past oversample Democrats, who are more apt to support socialized medicine.
Sanders is simply being dishonest when he implies that most Americans support government-run health care. There is no indication that's true.
What would most Americans most likely support? The same thing we support: More health freedom.
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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