Thread

We Need Medicare for All More Than Ever Over and over again, I hear from critics that moving to Medicare for All is just “too expensive.” That is demonstrably untrue. But let me tell you what IS too expensive. And that is our current healthcare system, which puts the profits of the big health insurance and drug companies ahead of the well-being of the American people. Today, not only is our current system cruel, broken and dysfunctional, it is wildly expensive. Despite spending twice as much per capita on healthcare as other wealthy countries, we remain the only major nation on Earth not to guarantee healthcare for all. The result: 85 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured and thousands die unnecessarily every year because they can’t afford the healthcare they need. The outrageous cost of the current American healthcare system is unsustainable. If we do nothing, it is estimated that we will spend $72 trillion over the next ten years. That is trillion with a T. These skyrocketing costs are not only making healthcare unaffordable for ordinary Americans, they are negatively impacting businesses and our entire economy. According to a recent survey, employers in our country are expecting the cost of healthcare to skyrocket by 11% next year — the highest in decades. Last year, as healthcare costs soared, insurance companies made over $54 billion in profits, drug companies continued to charge us, by far, the highest prices in the world for medicine, and healthcare CEOs received huge compensation packages. But that’s not all. The current system maintains massive amounts of expensive bureaucracy and administrative costs designed not to provide high quality healthcare to all, but to make executives and stockholders extraordinarily rich. It is not an accident, for example, that we spend a fraction of what other countries spend on primary healthcare and disease prevention. Not only would investments in these areas make Americans healthier, they would save tens of billions a year in keeping people out of emergency rooms and hospitals. The Medicare for All legislation that I introduced would save the American people over $1 trillion and 114,000 lives each and every year according to researchers at the Yale School of Public Health. This legislation has 18 cosponsors in the Senate and 115 in the House. Most importantly, it now has the support of 64% of the American people, according to a poll that came out last month. Over a four-year transition period, Medicare for All would guarantee healthcare as a human right to everyone. In the first year, we reduce the eligibility age to 55, cover all children under 18, and expand Medicare to cover dental, vision and hearing. In the second year, the Medicare eligibility age would be reduced to 45. And in the third year it would drop to 35. By the fourth year, every man, woman and child would be enrolled in a Medicare for All system with no copayments, no premiums, no deductibles and no out-of-pocket expenses. Every major country on Earth figured out decades ago how to provide universal healthcare to all of their people at a much lower cost than we do. Please don’t tell me we cannot do the same.