Socialism in a nutshell

Mark Levin’s guests on Sunday evening were talking about socialism in general, and free "Medicare for All" in particular. Prof. Robert Lawson explained the fallacy:

If you want to find out how expensive something is, make it free.

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Medicare is going broke

image credit: nextavenue.org

Betsy McCaughey has been one of the most informed critics of healthcare policy ever since Obamacare reared its ugly head. Her latest column at American Spectator sounds the alarm over Medicare Part A and the Democrat candidates’ promises of Medicare For All (titled "Democrats To Seniors: Drop Dead”):

Medicare is going broke,
and the Dems’ presidential candidates couldn’t care less

Baby boomers beware. If you’re in your 50s or 60s and you’re counting on Medicare to pay your future hospital bills, you’re in for a shock. Medicare Part A — the fund that pays hospitals and nursing homes — is running out of money. A mere seven years from now, it will no longer have enough to pay your providers’ bills in full. 

The Medicare Trustees sounded the alarm in June, urging Congress to act “as soon as possible” to protect people “already dependent” on the program.

Good advice, but don’t expect most politicians to take it. The Democrats running for president are in fantasy land, proposing to expand Medicare to millions of younger people or even to the entire population through “Medicare for All.” Never mind Medicare’s insolvency. That’s like a family that can’t pay its mortgage out shopping for a mega-mansion.

. . .

Currently, Trump is using his only option. He’s reducing benefit costs. Any other remedy would require Congress’ cooperation, which is unlikely.

Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and other backers of Medicare for All are making big promises with no way to pay. 

Read the rest here.

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Medicare For All: new name, same old

image credit: aapsonline.org

(Assoc. of American Physicians and Surgeons)

The Mueller bombshell was a dud, so the Democrat party and their colleagues in the media immediately pivoted to healthcare. Bruce Bialosky is a contributor to Townhall. He has a good roll-out of what is and is not true of the Progressive’s trumpeted “Medicare For All” plan; He cites facts and also draws from his own experience in the system. Here are a few extracts:

Medicare is a program begun in 1966 to cover people 65 years of age and older. The program is to be paid through lifelong payroll tax payments akin to social security.   Unlike social security, the benefits are not related to how much you have paid into the program. An important point to understand is (for most people) the vast majority of medical expenses are incurred near the end of one’s life. When the program was established, it was not anticipated that people would be living as long as they do.  This has also driven up costs; i.e., keeping older people alive.

As an aside, Medicare covers for pre-existing conditions. 180 million people who are covered by corporation health insurance also are covered for pre-existing conditions as well as those covered by Medicaid. That is over 90% of Americans, so we can dispense with that canard.  Some politicians want you to believe people are threatening to take away coverage for pre-existing conditions when that is just not true. 

. . .

. . . Medicare is far from free.  Less paperwork and figuring out what is or isn’t covered notwithstanding, decisions still have to be made under Medicare unlike what has been stated by some politicians.  

. . .

. . .  Medicare for All is a nice saying, but very misleading.   First, Medicare comes with a cost for all and that would have to be factored in -   it is not free for anyone despite all you paid into the fund.  Second, it does not cover everything as some politicians lead you to believe.  Third, if you want to keep your doctor, you may not be able to do so.  

The truth is Medicare for All is just a ploy to further move us to government controlled and administered health care.  I have been writing this point for years and wrote that Obamacare was just a step along the way.  The Left continues making private insurance more and more difficult to administer and then belittles the insurance companies for their operations.  There is one goal here: to have complete control over the health care system and then we will be at the lowest common denominator for the health care we receive.

As you have been told before, just look at the health care administered by the VA. The Trump administration has finally freed our veterans to see private care practitioners.   Thank God.  Please don’t make the rest of us suffer the fate of our veterans being covered by government-run insurance.

Lots more here.

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Medicare For All and socialism

image credit: americanliberalreview.com

There has been any number of articles and analyses concerning the proposed “Medicare For All.” A recent on-line report can be found at Forbes here; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “dodges questions” on how to pay for it here (spoiler: she doesn’t know); and the NY Times explains what is good about the policy here (what a surprise!).

Yesterday, Justin Haskins published an accessible analysis at Townhall entitled “Socialists Won’t Rest Until We Have Single-Payer Health Care. We Must Stop Them.” The quote marks are there because that’s the title of the article, but they could be interpreted instead as scare quotes. Excerpts:

The 2018 midterms could someday be remembered as the beginning of the Democratic Party’s full embrace of creating a single-payer health care system in the United States. For the first time in American history, a large number of Democrats, many of whom identify as socialists, openly campaigned for the creation of a government-run health insurance model.

For instance, Democratic Socialists of America member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who won 78 percent of the vote on Election Day, championed Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) “Medicare for All” proposal, calling it the “ethical, logical, and affordable path to ensuring no person goes without dignified healthcare.” According to Ocasio-Cortez, “Medicare for All will reduce the existing costs of healthcare (and make Medicare cheaper, too!) by allowing all people in the US to buy into a universal healthcare system.” 

Ocasio-Cortez says she supports a universal system that would include “full vision, dental, and mental healthcare - because we know that true healthcare is about the whole self, not just your yearly physical.”

The cost of enacting such a radical program would be astronomical. Researchers at the Mercatus Center say Sen. Sanders’ plan would cost $32.6 trillion in its first decade, and they note that even if Congress were to double taxes paid by individuals and corporations, it wouldn’t be enough to pay for the program. That should terrify you, especially since the U.S. government’s deficit for the 2018 fiscal year was $782 billion and the national debt now stands at a $21.7 trillion.

But as shocking as the price tag for single-payer health care would be, it pales in comparison to the numerous health care-related problems that would be created by such a model. For starters, the government has an absolutely terrible record of providing health care. One example is the Veterans Health Administration, which is run by the federal government. It routinely suffers from underfunding and long wait times, which has forced the agency to allow veterans to go elsewhere to receive care. As the Military Times notes, “About one-third of all VA medical appointments today are … conducted by physicians outside the department’s system.”

. . .

If the federal government can’t properly run the VA system or Medicaid—or even the Post Office—why does anyone think it could manage one of the largest industries in the United States today?

Much more about the VA, mortality rates, and other scary stats are here.

RELATED: Veterans in the greater Cleveland are scraping the bottom of the barrel. Via Breitbart:

The 10 worst cities for veterans included Ohio metros — Cleveland (#92) and Toledo (#95). California contributed San Bernardino (#94) and Fresno (#97). Also at the bottom of the pack were Philadelphia (#91), Baton Rouge (#93), Baltimore (#96), Memphis (#98), Newark (#99), and Detroit (#100).

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