Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is at it again.
You’ve got to give him some credit. Sanders has pursued a lifelong dream of turning America into a socialist dystopia while he’s been living the life of Riley. Sanders won’t be happy until government runs everything from childcare to healthcare. His ideas are so outside of the mainstream that the Democrat Party took the nomination from him in 2016.
Since then, his ideas have gone mainstream in the party.
And he’s not going away. This time, he’s authored a bill with other Democrats in the House and Senate to implement a program called Medicare for All. It’s not really new. He and other Democratic Socialists have floated the idea for years.
It’s a bad idea. For one, most Americans actually like the healthcare coverage they currently have, but Medicare for All would abolish private health care coverage in the United States.
It’s even worse than Barack Obama’s promise lie that Americans could keep their health plan.
Deceptively, Medicare for All would allow people to purchase private insurance during a four-year transition period, during which Democrats would say, “See, we told you so.” But after four years, no private company could offer any plans that duplicate the government’s coverage. They would only stay in business by offering insurance for supplemental services such as cosmetic surgery.
Another problem with Medicare for All is the cost.
“Despite multiple Medicare expansions, changes and re-brandings in the past six decades, America has yet to see it become the utopia of which the left dreams,” writes the editorial board at The Washington Times. “It hasn’t been for lack of trying — or lack of funding. Today, Medicare is the second largest program of the federal government, which last year spent approximately $1.21 trillion on it. Yet by 2032, Medicare is likely to be insolvent.”
Sanders and the Democratic Socialists of America still think ObamaCare is a good idea, but “in the 16 years since passage of the ironically named Affordable Care Act — which was touted as the long-sought, self-sustaining solution to Americans’ rising healthcare costs — we have seen premiums rise across the board, costlier employer-provided health insurance and rampant fraud,” the Times notes. “Nor has it paid for itself as promised. In 2025, taxpayers were covering 80% of Obamacare plan costs, according to City Journal.”
Our constitutionally limited government should never run any aspect of healthcare. Allowing politicians and bureaucrats to decide which medical services are available, who can access them, and when and where they can receive them is why people in countries with government healthcare have reason to complain.
As Merrill Matthews opines at The Hill, “Medicare for All is more like the British National Health Service’s government-run health care system. Are the Brits as satisfied with their coverage as U.S. seniors are with Medicare? The 40-year running British Social Attitudes survey found last year that only 26 percent of British subjects are satisfied with the National Health Service, with 51 percent dissatisfied.”
Matthews adds, “It has many of the same problems as Great Britain’s system, including the very low rates it pays health care providers. When the government takes over the health care system, it must balance what it spends on health care with other claims on government funds, such as education, defense and welfare. There is never enough money to go around. That is why bureaucrats decide what medical services and products are available, usually based on political pressure.”
It’s not surprising that Democrat candidates are getting so much attention for Medicare for All. Like any other socialist scheme, it’s a shiny red apple on the outside that’s rotten to the core.
As the editors at National Review explain, “The pitch for Medicare for All starts off quite simply. We’re the richest country in the world, we spend all sorts of money on weapons, we should be able to afford to provide free health care to everybody. The promise is of a paradise in which there is no more dealing with being denied care by insurance companies or struggling to pay for prescription drugs.”
They add, “Most Americans, including the 161 million Americans who obtain insurance through their employers and the 36 million seniors who have chosen Medicare Advantage plans, wouldn’t be able to keep their coverage, even if they liked it. There was a massive backlash when Americans realized they wouldn’t be able to keep their plans under Obamacare, and that was a comparatively small few million people.”
Americans who think this is a good idea should look around at everything else run by politicians inside the beltway and realize people like Bernie Sanders will have quality healthcare no matter what happens to everyone else. Certainly, the current system has problems, but we should use our power to make changes instead of giving that power to Washington bureaucrats.
And once they have that power, it’s not coming back. All we’ll have left is waiting lists for treatment, trillions of dollars spent on a massive government entitlement, higher individual and corporate taxes, and a national debt that’ll dwarf our current $40 trillion in debt. To keep this from happening, Republicans need to get serious and work to make sure Bernie Sanders and company can’t make this Medicare for All scheme a reality.
