President Trump can’t seem to decide if he wants to double-down on impeachment, or try to change the subject.
He attempted to do the latter in a Thursday speech, rolling out his health care plan and blasting the Democrats and their proposals for universal, government-run Medicare for All. As reported by the Washington Examiner, Trump said “These people on the other side — these people are crazy by the way, they’re totally crazy — they want to take [your Medicare] away and give you lousy healthcare.”
“This president has been focusing on health issues that other administrations have been ignoring for decades.” @realDonaldTrump will take “Medicare For All” head-on and lay out his own healthcare planhttps://t.co/6WnslZoacD
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) October 3, 2019
And he continued on to say that “almost every major Democrat in Washington has backed a massive government health-care takeover” and “your taxes are going to go up at a level you’ve never seen before,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
This echoes President Trump’s long-standing opposition to Medicare for All, and socialism more broadly. In a widely-read USA Today op-ed, the president wrote “The truth is that the centrist Democratic Party is dead. The new Democrats are radical socialists who want to model America’s economy after Venezuela.”
Trump isn’t exactly known as a policy expert, but he gets this one completely right: Medicare for All would be an absolute disaster. And Trump isn’t beating up a straw man. It’s worth noting that it’s essentially the majority position of the Democratic Party. Leading 2020 candidates such as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders staunchly support Medicare for All, and so do 65% of Democratic primary voters, who say they are more likely to support a candidate who agrees with Medicare for All.
First, the president is entirely correct to point out that Americans would lose their health care they have now, even if they like it. Medicare for All isn’t optional, that’s simply not how socialism works.
In fact, most of the Medicare for All legislative proposals put out so far would essentially outlaw, or at least strictly limit, private health insurance altogether. It’s estimated that roughly 250 million people currently benefit from private health insurance, and they’d likely all lose it under Medicare for All. So while calling it a “massive government health-care takeover” might be Trumpian in style, it’s also completely accurate.
And Trump is spot-on when he says “your taxes are going to go up at a level you’ve never seen before,” at least in that Medicare for All would inevitably require massive increases in federal taxes. The lowest, most conservative price estimate of the socialization of healthcare comes in at a whopping $32 trillion over a decade, which is roughly $226,950 per American taxpayer.
So Trump is right to say that socializing our healthcare system wouldn’t exactly be cheap. Medicare for All would throw people off their healthcare they have now even if they like it, destroy medical innovation, involve massive expenditure, and possibly lead to wait times and rationing.
Sure sounds “totally crazy” to me.
