“I would hope that this [coronavirus] crisis … should be a moment in which people ask fundamental questions about the dysfunctionality of our current health care system, and have the guts to finally say … that the function of a rational health care system is to provide quality care to all, not to make billions in profits…” — Bernie Sanders, insisting his Medicare-for-All [M4A] plan is “rational,” Grabien, 3/13/20

“M4A’s total costs over its first ten years would be … in the range of $54.6 to $60.7 trillion.” — Charles Blahous, American Enterprise Institute, February 2019

Bernie’s candidacy may have faded, but his radical ideas have not. As the commie-pinko publication The Nation gleefully notes, exit polls showed that no matter which candidate they supported for the nomination, Democrat primary voters favored Bernie’s policies on health care:

On the signature issue of the Sanders campaign — establishing a single-payer Medicare-for-All system that provides health care to every American as a right — 57 percent of Michigan voters said they favored “a government plan for all instead of private insurance.” Just 37 percent opposed the Sanders position. In Missouri, 59 percent favored the government plan. In Mississippi, 60 percent favored the government plan. That aligns with results from previous primaries and caucuses.

Throughout the Democrat primary season, I’ve had a bunch of callers who thought Medicare-for-All is Medicare for everybody. That’s exactly what the program’s creators want you to think. It’s deceptively named to make you believe it’s just an expansion of the familiar Medicare program beyond its current 65-and-older age range. But Medicare-for-All (supported by Crazy Bernie, Elizabeth Fauxcahontas Warren, and others) is a horse’s ass of a different color.

M4A would be a sweeping new government-run single-payer system. According to The New York Times, the program would have several major components: universal coverage, an end to employer insurance plans, and an end to individual markets. So, if you like your private insurance, you couldn’t keep your private insurance. If you are one of the 150 million Americans who gets your health insurance through your employer, you couldn’t anymore. Poof, gone.

Medicare-for-All is what Obama really wanted: socialized medicine. It would put the government in total control of health insurance, health coverage, and health treatment. And, ultimately, it would mean the utter destruction of Medicare, seniors be damned. But Democrats aren’t telling you that.

M4A LIES

• “[M4A] is not run by the government. Medicare allows you to go to any doctor you want. For better or worse, this is not socialized medicine. This is keeping the same system intact but getting rid of the private insurance companies, giving people another card, which allows them complete freedom.” — Bernie Sanders, making a series of ridiculously untrue claims, given that Medicare-for-All is a single-payer government-run system, cbs “60 Minutes,” 2/24/20
• “[T]he price tag is — it will be substantially less than letting the current system go.” — Bernie Sanders, cbs “60 Minutes,” 2/24/20
• “Well, you know, I can’t rattle off to you every nickel and every dime, but we have accounted for — you talked about Medicare-for-All, we have options out there that will pay for it.” — Bernie Sanders, when asked, “How do you know it’s going to be paid for if you don’t know how much the price is?” on cbs “60 Minutes,” 2/24/20
• “…Medicare-for-All will lower health care costs in this country by $450 billion a year, and save 68,000 lives of people who otherwise would have died.” — Bernie Sanders, in Nevada Democrat debate, citing a disputed study in The Lancet that implausibly claimed billions in savings by providing primary care to uninsured people, Vox, 2/26/20
• “[L]et’s say, just for argument’s sake, our overall spending did go up [under M4A]. We would be getting a lot for that money. Remember, 27 million more people would be covered, and they would be covered well. Bernie’s plan is incredibly generous — it covers vision, dental, long-term care, and drugs. In fact, Medicare-for-All is a misleading title, because Medicare requires some copays and out-of-pocket expenses. And Bernie will excitedly tell you that his plan eliminates those.” — John Oliver, host, hbo’s “Last Week Tonight” show, quoted by NewsBusters, 2/17/20
• “We can do this [M4A] without raising taxes on middle-class families by one penny. We can do it by asking the top one percent, by asking the big corporations to pay a little more, and my personal favorite, by cracking down on the tax cheats.” — Elizabeth Warren, on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” nbc, 12/5/19
• “Why are you not a candidate calling for Medicare-for-All like some of the other candidates? … Why can Canada have it, why can the UK have it, why can’t we have it?” — Katy Tur, msnbc anchor, to then-presidential candidate Sen. Michael Bennet (D, CO), omitting the fact that what Canada and the UK “have” are waiting lists at an all-time high, NewsBusters, 11/8/19
• “[O]pponents of Medicare-for-All too often revert to myths … The first myth is that Medicare-for-All will necessarily increase health care spending. That’s wrong … I regard it as nearly certain that Medicare-for-All would save trillions of dollars over the decade compared with our projected health care spending.” — Donald “Death Panels” Berwick, Obama’s administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, usa Today, 10/22/19
• “Health care costs are crushing the middle class, taking more and more money straight from the wallets of workers and families … The average premium for a family of four in 2019 is a staggering $20,576 — a toll that is eating into their wages, while their out-of-pocket costs soar. Since 2009, premiums have increased 54 percent and workers’ contributions to premiums have increased 71 percent, but wages have risen only 26 percent.” — Donald Berwick, who orchestrated the Obamacare catastrophe and thus is largely responsible for the rising horrors he’s complaining about, usa Today, 10/22/19
• “Joe [Biden] said that Medicare-for-All would cost over $30 trillion. That’s right, Joe. Status quo over ten years will be $50 trillion. Every study done shows that Medicare-for-All is the most cost-effective approach to providing health care to every man, woman, and child in this country.” — Bernie Sanders, third Democratic debate, The Washington Post, 9/12/19. The Post’s fact-checker gave Sanders’ statement three Pinocchios.
• “Well, listen, the idea is that everyone gets access to medical care. And you don’t have to go through the process of going through an insurance company, having them give you approval, going through the paperwork, all of the delay that may require.” — Sen. Kamala Harris (D, CA), Fox News, 1/30/19

M4A FACTS

Staggering Costs. “[I]f we expanded Medicaid for everybody, gave everybody a Medicaid card, we would be spending such an astronomical sum of money that, you know, we would bankrupt the nation.” — Bernie Sanders, telling the truth in a 1987 video, posted at The Washington Free Beacon

• “Even Canada’s single-payer system doesn’t offer the range of free services Sanders proposes. For example, [Canada] doesn’t cover vision and dental. Sanders’ plan does, and with no copayments for them or anything else … The cost of the Sanders plan would be a fantastical number of trillions. He evidently thinks it beneath him to talk about money.” — Froma Harrop, RealClearPolitics, 1/21/20
• “They [the Sanders campaign] don’t go into a whole lot of detail [on M4A] … The Sanders proposal to me was not clear enough to enable me to make the estimates on different types of families.” — Robert Pollin, University of Massachusetts at Amherst “expert” referred by Bernie Sanders to The Washington Post to explain how M4A costs will impact the middle class, The Washington Post, 10/5/19
• “If you’re making more than $29,000, in a progressive way, you will be paying more in taxes.” — Bernie Sanders, The Washington Post, 10/5/19
• “Would people get to keep their doctors? Unclear. Would prescription drug costs decrease? Uncertain. Would wait times increase? Unknown. Copays? No, depending on the plan. Increase in taxes? Almost certainly…” — “Medicare-for-All Is Not Medicare, and Not Really for All. So What Does It Actually Mean?” in ProPublica, 9/6/19
• “There’s no precedent in American history for a tax increase of that magnitude … It’s not going to happen.” — Paul Starr, Princeton professor of sociology and public affairs, predicting that to cover the cost of single-payer plans the government would have to at least double personal income taxes, The New York Times, 2/27/19
• “We estimate … the federal government’s health care spending would increase substantially [under M4A], rising from $1.09 trillion to $3.50 trillion, an increase of 221 percent.” — Jodi L. Liu and Christine Eibner, “National Health Spending Estimates Under Medicare-for-All,” the Rand Corporation, 2019
• In 2017, Vox examined the causes of the demise of the ColoradoCare initiative, which was modeled closely after Bernie Sanders’ Medicare-for-All. Reporter Dylan Matthews lamented that ColoradoCare “matched the … health care platform of the Democrat Party. And it failed — really, really, really badly.”
• “[Colorado] voters … rejected a ballot measure to enact a state-based single-payer system by an astounding margin of 79 percent to 21 percent. Amendment 69, the Colorado Creation of ColoradoCare System Initiative, would have created … a tax-funded government insurance program. Private health insurers would have been rendered obsolete … The plan was to be funded by a new 10 percent tax on basically everything.” — “Single-Payer Health Care Failed Miserably in Colorado Last Year. Here’s Why,” Vox, 9/14/17
• “[T]he single-payer system Vermont wanted to build would require about $2.5 billion in additional revenue in its first year … [T]he state only raises $2.7 billion in taxes a year for every program it funds.” — “How Vermont’s Single-Payer Health Care Dream Fell Apart,” Vox, 12/22/14. When the astronomical costs of the plan to cover all Vermonters were calculated, Democrat Governor Peter Shumlin abandoned it.

End of Private Insurance. “Medicare-for-All’s proponents admit their plan would upend the health care system. It would eliminate private health coverage and enroll every man, woman, and child in a single, government-run insurance plan … Public-option supporters … claim their plan would guarantee consumers an affordable health plan but preserve private insurance … But the public option is little more than a stay of execution for private coverage. In due time, private insurance would vanish.” — Sally Pipes, Forbes, 2/18/20

• “Obviously, all of the 180 million people who have private insurance are not going to pay less [than with M4A]. It’s impossible to have an ‘everybody wins’ scenario here. The plan is by design incredibly disruptive. As a result, you create enormous winners and losers.” — Kenneth Thorpe, Emory University health policy chairman, The Washington Post, 10/5/19
• “Medicare-for-All is single-payer health care. That’s it. That’s the policy.” — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, inadvertently swerving into the truth, on Twitter, 7/30/19
• “The measure would outlaw all private insurance for medically necessary services but allow a sliver to remain for supplemental coverage. It would force the roughly 150 million Americans who are insured through their employer to switch to a government-run program.” — Bloomberg, 7/5/19

It’s Not Medicare. “Bernie Sanders’ Medicare-for-All plan bears little resemblance to Medicare. The Vermont senator undoubtedly exploits the word ‘Medicare’ to obscure the radicalness of his single-payer proposal … Medicare isn’t single-payer.” — Froma Harrop, RealClearPolitics, 1/21/20

• “Democrats call it ‘Medicare-for-All,’ but it is the single-payer option, a government-run insurance program, which likely means the federal government will in effect become your doctor, deciding who gets care and who doesn’t, who ultimately lives or dies, based on age and diagnosis, and whether you take more from the treasury than you contribute in taxes.” — Cal Thomas, in The Washington Times, 2/26/20
• “It’s an advertising slogan; it’s not a scientific concept.” — John McDonough, professor at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, on using “Medicare” to sell M4A, ProPublica, 9/6/19
• “But what Sanders is proposing is not Medicare-for-All. It is far more generous — and more expensive. It would be funded much differently. And its relationship with private insurance would be nothing like today’s Medicare. Sanders would, in fact, replace the current Medicare program.” — Howard Gleckman, Urban Institute senior fellow, in “Medicare-for-All Has Nothing to Do with Medicare. Call It Something Else,” Forbes, 7/31/2019

Medicare for None. “The proposal for Medicare-for-All that I introduced includes making sure that undocumented people are also covered.” — Bernie Sanders, unable to admit that covering illegal aliens would bankrupt the program and toss seniors off the cliff, Democrat debate, 3/15/20

• “[S]ingle-payer health care proposals like Medicare-for-All could very well destroy Medicare as we know it … [S]ingle-payer systems like those in Britain and Canada hold down costs by limiting the availability of doctors and treatments, even for the most serious life-threatening diseases like cancer, brain tumors, and heart disease … [S]ingle-payer systems restrict access to the newest drugs for cancer and other serious diseases, sometimes for years, compared with the United States system.” — Dr. Scott W. Adler, Hoover Institution senior fellow, “The Dangers of Medicare-for-All,” The New York Times, 3/9/20
• “Like Medicare-for-All, a public option would strain the nation’s supply of healthcare providers … Patients in countries with Medicare-for-All-style systems already must grapple with shortages of care. Canadians were waiting for over 1 million medical procedures in 2019.” — Sally Pipes, Forbes, 2/18/20
• “With an increase in people on the same health care system … there will be less access to services for everyone. Currently, Medicare and Medicaid pay less than the private market in reimbursement rates and there are fewer and fewer providers even accepting Medicare and Medicaid patients. There is the potential for a major physician shortage in the next two decades, and [M4A] … will not be the carrot to bring more suppliers in.” — Elizabeth O’Connor, Texas Public Policy Foundation legislative fellow, in The Hill, 2/16/20
• “Medicare-for-All Could Mean Doctors for None.” — The Wall Street Journal, 2/10/20
• “[I]n the British National Health Service [nhs] — the grand-daddy of ‘single payer’ health care — there are more than 4 million people awaiting hospitalization [along with] denials or cancellations of surgeries [and] shabby conditions in overcrowded and understaffed British hospitals.” — Robert E. Moffit, “‘Medicare-for-All’ Would Ruin the Care Americans Already Like,” Heritage, 2/15/19
• “[O]ffering a government insurance program reimbursing at Medicare rates … could place as many as 55 percent of rural hospitals, or 1,037 hospitals across 46 states, at high risk of closure. The rural hospitals at high risk represent more than 63,000 staffed beds and 420,000 employees … [leading to] potential elimination of services and reduction of clinical and administrative staff, as well as damage the economic foundation of the communities these hospitals serve.” — “The Potential Impact of a Medicare Public Option on U.S. Rural Hospitals and Communities: A Scenario Analysis,” Navigant study, Guidehouse.com, August 2019

A lot of people who think they support Medicare-for-All — because it “sounds good” — have no idea exactly what they’re endorsing. In “Even Supporters May Not Understand Medicare-for-All” in Axios, Kaiser Family Foundation [kff] President and ceo Drew Altman notes that kff’s polling showed that 59 percent of Medicare-for-All supporters didn’t think the plan would require people to give up their employer-based insurance. If people are first informed that Medicare-for-All would eliminate private coverage, 58 percent instead oppose Medicare-for-All. And opposition shoots to 70 percent once people realize Medicare-for-All would lead to delays in care. Which it would, as it does in every government-run health care system in existence.

But even though Joe Biden has expressed reservations about Medicare-for-All, don’t expect him to stand in its way. Biden doesn’t even know where he is half the time. The Democrats have pursued single-payer since fdr, and they’re certainly not about to give it up now. As I have said, liberal ideas never go away; they just go stealth — to emerge again when the coast is clear. These people have no originality: all they do is recycle their bad ideas over and over until they are finally enacted … and then fail miserably.

Cartoon ©2020 Bosch Fawstin, created for Daniel Greenfield at FrontPage Magazine, used by permission; Photos ©2020 Charles Krupa/AP/Shutterstock