The Patriot Post® · The Left's Latest Socialist Health Care Plan

As part of their ever-expanding effort to buy votes with “free” stuff, House Democrats this week introduced their latest attempted government takeover of health care under the now-infamous label “Medicare for All.” The sweeping legislation, introduced by Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Debbie Dingell (D-MI), would essentially outlaw private health insurance, replacing it with an entirely federal-run single-payer system similar to those found in Canada and the UK. Obviously, this stands no chance of becoming law … yet. But let’s look at what Democrats want.

Evoking classic socialist, anti-capitalist rhetoric, Jayapal asserted, “It’s time to put people’s health over profit. Our bill will cover everyone. Not just those who are fortunate enough to have employer-sponsored insurance.” She further asserted, “Not just children. Not just seniors. Not just those who are healthy. Everyone. Because healthcare is a human right.”

How do Democrats treat such “rights”?

Make no mistake: This legislation is, as The Heritage Foundation’s health-care expert Robert Moffit writes, “profoundly authoritarian.” Individual freedom regarding health care would be a thing of the past. No more keeping your doctor or your health insurance. Those would all be eliminated in favor of a system based on centralized government control. While hospitals would not be owned by the government, they would essentially be controlled — along with many treatment choices — by bureaucrats in Washington. Hello, fascism?

Taxes would necessarily increase significantly, as the estimated cost for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s similar Medicare for All plan comes in at a whopping $32.6 trillion over 10 years. Moffit further notes, “Ken Thorpe of Emory University, formerly an adviser to President Bill Clinton, estimates that the federal taxation needed to finance the Sanders plan would amount to an additional 20 percent tax on workers’ income, and more than 7 out of 10 working families would end up paying more for health care than they do today.”

So, not only would Americans lose their freedom to choose their own insurance plans and doctors, they’d be paying more than ever for health care via taxes while receiving poorer service. Citing the Journal of the American Medical Association’s comparison of the current U.S. system to that of both Canada and the UK, Moffit explains, “Concerning access to specialized care, for example, they found that only 6 percent of American patients reported waiting more than two months to see a medical specialist, compared to 39 percent of Canadian patients and 19 percent of British patients. The Fraser Institute, a prominent Canadian think tank, estimated that in 2018 the median waiting time for a Canadian patient to see a medical specialist on referral from a general practitioner was 19.8 weeks.”

There are no two ways about it. This Democrat legislation is a boondoggle designed to buy votes and then install an authoritarian system to effect greater centralized control over the lives of all Americans, all under the guise of providing “universal” health care. This monstrosity of a bill is about as un-American as it gets.