Smith: Medicare for all

By Todd Smith | The Caledonian Record

Over a hundred Democratic members of Congress, including Vermont’s Peter Welch, have joined in sponsoring a new “Medicare for all” bill even more sweeping that the one proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders.

The bill proposes to convert the entire U.S. health care industry into a government single-payer system in just two years. After that deadline, there would be no more commercial health insurance, except for what little is not included in the new regime. The Medicare you know would disappear as everyone would be swept into the new plan (except possibly VA-eligible veterans and Indians).

The plan would include long term care insurance and both vision and dental benefits. Undocumented immigrants would be eligible for free care.

The 107 sponsors neglected to explain what the bill will cost and how it might be paid for. The less extensive Sanders version was expected to cost $32 trillion over ten years. The House version will cost much more.

The sponsors say that the federal government will contain costs by enforcing a global budget, like Canada’s, which tells every hospital, nursing home, clinic, and medical practice how much they are entitled to spend … after which they get no more funds until the following year.

Are Americans ready for this industrial strength socialized medicine?

According to a recent poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation, “56 percent of survey respondents said they favored a Medicare-for-all plan. However, support for the plan drops when Americans were faced with prospects of paying higher taxes to fund the system and the elimination of private health insurance companies (only 37-percent favorability for each scenario). When respondents were asked if they would still support the proposal if it threatened the current Medicare program, only 32-percent remained in favor.”

Even the very liberal Democratic leader of the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has tiptoed away from an endorsement.

It is unfortunately just like Rep. Welch to sign on to an utterly unaffordable and unworkable left-wing pie-in-the-sky idea like this one. We hope when he comes back to Vermont he will explain this utopian plan to the people who will have to pay for it, and the people who won’t be treated when their provider comes to the end of its global budget.

Todd M. Smith is the publisher of the Caledonian Record, where this editorial first appeared. He lives in St. Johnsbury.

Image courtesy of U.S. House of Representatives

6 thoughts on “Smith: Medicare for all

  1. Welch came to VT with his 8 kids on the tsunami wave of Liberals from MA. Why leave such a “great state” full of history, the Revolution, Tea Party, Paul Revere, Bunker Hill etc, uproot and travel north to VT? Was it that he couldn’t get into MA office or their US Congress? He had no VT roots and is not a Vermonter, but a Flatlander.

    Upon getting to VT, what do I do for a living he must think? One quickly learns the answer is government, like the Bern. With the Liberal base, it’s a shoo in, don’t mean you know anything about anything. Just BS the LIbs on that tsunami. Now the means that brought them here, dissipated under their feet leaving them here. So, the state is left with Welch and the garbage that floated in.

    Has Welch done anything for VT? What has Leaky Leahy & The Bern done? Contact anyone of them, good luck getting answers to your concerns (first hand knowledge). Welch’s cronies say I’m not a VT resident….what huh? So no emails letters from him. But I can get emails for Rep Gertz R-FL no problem, a nice guy. It keeps me more informed about Congress than W-L-S. I’m considering contacting Rep Johnson of WI about my Veteran issue.

    Yup, some representation. VT gets what it deserves, not me. Welch must be bankrolled by G Soros.

  2. “The plan would include long term care insurance and both vision and dental benefits. Undocumented immigrants would be eligible for free care.”

    Consider the devastating impact this would have. An estimated MILLION MORE border crashers are forecast to penetrate our southern border w/Mexico this year with not a single word of alarm from the Destructivats salivating over all the new potential ballots.

    The elements are assembling for one massive Scheissensturm following the imminent currency collapse. Any pains you’ve been feeling up to now have been but symptoms of what’s coming. And it does not appear as though Herr Trump, in light of his latest (in)actions, has any solutions.

  3. Hey, Pete, you going to pay for this fiasco? Never happen, just another boon doggle with no thought as to how it will be funded.

  4. The beauty of it for Peter is that he will continue to be re-elected until the failures of it come to light and then he will be retired anyway. If we lose Trump next year we could easily face the greatest hit to our way of life ever.

  5. The party of NO on Veterans hospital reform want’s to move everyone to more screwed up gov health care?? Wasn’t this the same group who shoved Obola care on us without reading the bill? Wasn’t that promised to save us 2500. in med cost? Seems like the demontards think we are stupid enough to believe them on this after they decimated the last one. I know their voters are but there are still a lot of THINKing Americans who want nothing to do with more Demontard failure…

  6. Medicare for all sounds great, but Peter how you and the rest of your ” Socialist DemocRATs ”
    plan on paying for it ???

    Oh, that’s right you and the rest ” Socialist ” geniuses now running Congress figure you can
    fleece the millionaires by more taxes because they have all the money…… Yeah !! I cannot
    wait to see how that works for you.

    Hey Peter, how many businesses and jobs have you ever created and paid people a salary,
    yeah, that ‘s what I thought.

    Luckily you work for the government if you worked in the real world with your accomplishments
    you would be fired by now……….

    Follow the Constitution, not your socialist counterparts agenda, you look like a fool….Pretty Sad !!

Comments are closed.