Medicare for all. That’s the battle cry of American socialists. Wouldn’t it be grand to provide free medical coverage for all Americans, allowing them to live their lives without exorbitant and exploitive insurance premiums or the constant, nagging fear of going uncovered?
Bernie Sanders
Well, the great Bernie Sanders Claus has a plan, creatively named – you guessed it – Medicare for All. If passed, M4A, as it’s called for short, would provide free health care for every American, regardless of income level. With an estimated price of $32.6 trillion over the first 10 years, that’s an average of about $23,000 per taxpayer per year.
But of course, we don’t all pay at the same rate. As that’s fairly similar to the $3.2 trillion squeezed from American taxpayers in 2017, a more realistic estimate might be to say that – at least in the early years – we’ll all pay about twice what we pay now in taxes, giving us just one more thing in common with the taxpayers of the socialist paradise, Venezuela.
The Brilliant Plan
Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) Medicare for All Act of 2017 would establish the Universal Medicare Program, which would cover every resident – not citizen, or even legal resident – of the United States, as well as some non-residents in certain situations. Naturally, it has the support of Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Kamala Harris (D-CA), and several other Democrats from both congressional bodies – including the new darling of the DNC, New York district candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez .
The bill includes a freedom of choice act – allowing anyone to pay for private coverage if they so choose – but there is no income requirement obligating the well-off to opt out. And who would want to double their tax obligation and get no benefit in return? It seems highly unlikely that many would opt out of the system to keep costs down, as most of us wouldn’t be able to afford private health care anymore once we’ve doubled our tax obligation to cover the so-called free program.
Anyone born or acquiring a qualifying resident status in the U.S. after implementation would be automatically enrolled and issued an individual Medicare identification card. Naturally, this program covers pretty much any medical cost one could imagine – presumably including abortion, as the bill includes “termination of pregnancy” as a related medical condition to pregnancy in its non-discrimination clause.
No Such Thing as a Free Lunch
There’s an old saying that comes to mind anytime some socialist comes around promising free stuff: “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” Think this is just paranoia? Let’s examine the actual cost of this most generous of offers. The Mercatus Center at George Mason University released a study in late July estimating the total price of Bernie’s M4A at $32.6 trillion in the first 10 years, from 2022 to 2031.
Sanders attacks this number, of course, but not by offering any alternative projections. He merely says that the Mercatus Center received some funding from the conservative Koch brothers and that the results are misleading. But a senior health policy advisor from the Clinton administration, Professor Kenneth Thorpe, said the study is accurate. “It’s showing that if you are going to go in this direction, it’s going to cost the federal government $2.5 trillion to $3 trillion a year in terms of spending,” he said.
Of course, this $3.26 trillion a year for the first 10 years is a conservative estimate; it assumes that the act will also successfully lower federal spending – which it probably won’t. The government overspent in 2017, of course, creating an evil looking $666 billion budget deficit for just that year.
Here’s what we’ll all pay in federal income taxes alone for 2018:
- 10% up to $9,525 for individuals or $19,050 for married couples filing jointly.
- 12% up to $38,700 for individuals or $77,400 for married couples filing jointly.
- 22% up to $82,500 for individuals or $165,000 for married couples filing jointly.
- 24% up to $157,500 for individuals or $315,000 for married couples filing jointly.
- 32% up to $200,000 for individuals or $400,000 for married couples filing jointly.
- 35% up to $500,000 for individuals or $600,000 for married couples filing jointly.
- 37% over $500,000 for individuals or over $600,000 for married couples filing jointly.
The Socialist Paradise
It doesn’t require a degree in economics to understand that doubling our tax burden will result in most taxpayers shelling out more for this system than they’ll get back in benefits – by quite a lot, for most of us. Ultimately, the time would come when even the unemployed would be harmed by this. Consider what happens when you double the tax burden of those who work.
Let’s look at the $50,000 so often touted as the average household income. Without any other deductions or credits right now, that household owes the federal government 22% of that, or $11,000. Now double that to $22,000 at 44%, and the average U.S. household will have paid 10%, or $5,000, more than a family making the same amount in Venezuela.
Does it sound paranoid to suggest we might end up like Venezuela? How long can we sustain this before the strain of striving to barely make it while those who don’t bother do just fine begins to break the average worker? When unemployment skyrockets, as seems almost inevitable, where would the government turn for funds?
