Every election season (and election seasons are getting longer and longer), we hear from Democrats about just how wonderful Medicare, the health insurance program for the elderly and disabled, is. It’s so amazing that they want to destroy everything that currently exists and replace it with this entitlement for everyone. To the average person, especially a leftist trained to look to government to take care of them, this sounds great – who doesn’t love Medicare? Well, me, for one, and a lot of people who know how it actually works. As you watch Democrats across the country campaign on this issue, maybe try to ask them about just a few of the obvious problems with Medicare they don’t want you to think about.
In this discussion, you have to put aside the cost. Medicare is going broke, and so is the country. “Medicare for All” is, in part, an attempt to extend its life. If you go from 66-ish million enrollees to 350 million premium-paying people (who don’t have any other option but joining), there will be a major influx of money that will, temporarily and mostly on paper, look pretty good. But doctors won’t be able to afford their entire practice, as Medicare “reimbursements” – code for what the government will pay for any given procedure – are, oftentimes, less than the cost to deliver the service.
Who could stay in business where everyone pays less than it costs for a good or service? No one. And if government pays more, the program costs more. The death spiral starts slow, but it is always steady.
This, of course, is just 15 years after Obamacare promised to end the uninsured problem and save every family $2,500 a year in premiums. Neither came remotely close to happening and were never really expected to – Democrats were the car salesman telling you the Corvette will get you chicks, knowing full well your balding, 200 extra pounds self could barely fit in the car.
You don’t get to change one part of an equation and have no effect on the rest of it; that’s not how life works.
More than that, however, is the simple fact that if Medicare is so wonderful, why does it require supplemental insurance? Unless you’re enrolled in Medicare, you have no idea how it works.
To get your Social Security, which you’ve also paid into your whole life, you have to enroll in Medicare Part A. Meaning that if you have insurance you like, the feds make you give it up – coerced enrollment – in order to get the money everyone pretends is in your account. Something wonderful and popular wouldn’t need to do that.
When you get there, you still have to pay premiums, which takes up a bunch of your Social Security money. Then you have to get Medicare Part B. Part A covers your hospital care, but you hopefully won’t be spending your time in the hospital, so the rest of your medical care is covered by Part B. Both of these “plans” pay only a portion of your costs, which is why you need the additional supplemental insurance, as those costs add up.
Suddenly, you’re paying a lot of money for something that’s “free.”
Oh, and if you want prescription drug coverage (and you do), you have to sign up for Medicare Part D, which is even more premiums. Then you just have to hope the government has chosen whatever prescriptions you may need to be worthy of inclusion in your plan so you can get them; otherwise it’s out of pocket or something else you must hope works as well.
Sounds like Utopia, doesn’t it?
The only thing single payer Medicare for All does is give politicians and bureaucrats complete control over your existence. From the cradle to the grave, what care you can get will not be determined by you and your doctor, but by elected and unelected people to whom you are a number in a spreadsheet. True, private insurance is not perfect, but you and your doctor can appeal their decisions and bring public pressure through media, and political pressure by contacting your Congressman, to change their decisions. When it’s the government standing in your way, who do you appeal to?
The answer is no one.
There’s a reason the world’s rich come to the United States for their healthcare, fleeing their single-payer systems when they get seriously ill. There’s a reason busloads of Canadians come to the United States for cancer treatment rather than wait in line and die in their “free” system.
What none of these leftists will tell you is, sure, socialized medicine is great…unless you get really sick. Have the flu, you can get a shot. Break your arm, you can get it set. Find a lump…get in line, and in six to eight months you’ll be able to meet with a specialist to see how best to begin the process of starting some kind of treatment. Provided, of course, you live that long, and it’s not too late by then to do anything about it.
The ultimate price control in healthcare is rationing care. No one wants to admit it, but that’s how it works. Slow-walk care and see who lives long enough to get it. The percentage is low.
But, they say, the overhead for Medicare is “Waaaay cheaper” than in the private sector, and that’s how we can save money – the efficiency! Ever known a government agency to be efficient? Medicare forces the doctors to do the paperwork – the push it off on them. Think of how efficient you could look on paper if you could force others to do your work.
Literally nothing they tell you is true or the whole picture. But once you’re in, they’ve got you.
This is why the filibuster is so important. Yes, without it Republicans could pass a lot of things, but Democrats would easily repeal them when they were in power and replace them with liberal priorities. The difference is the damage liberal policy priorities do is irreversible.
If Democrats destroyed the private health insurance market completely by making it illegal, then Republicans regain control and make it legal again, what do you think would happen? I can tell you the answer is nothing. Nothing.
The health insurance system in this country is very complex because of all the government interference – state and federal regulations, etc. Democrats would wipe it out, putting every company out of business. No one, no matter how rich, would invest in rebuilding something that would take years to do, knowing that Democrats could come back in at any moment and wipe it out again. Like life, once you wipe out the freedom in healthcare, it is gone – you only get one shot.
The government’s interference can be rolled back while the market still exists, and it should be, but once it’s gone, it is gone. That’s why we can’t let this happen, no matter what, by any means necessary. And those means start with voting against every single Democrat anywhere you find them on the ballot this fall, and every fall thereafter.
Democrats have never been more dangerous; we cannot allow them the literal power of life and death over everyone because we know what they’d choose.
Derek Hunter is the host of the Derek Hunter Show on WMAL in Washington, D.C., and has a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.