Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has introduced his much-touted Medicare-for-All bill with a good slate of cosponsors joining the effort. And it sets the opposition out to pick at the draft with calls of calamity.
There are those opposed on principle, but the most common criticism seems to have to do with cost, which is interesting in itself. Basically, if you aren’t opposed to the idea that everybody be covered, and be covered through a Medicare-style system, then all you have left is to say that we need to work out the details (or maintain, farcically, that no iteration can work).
Arguing that a Medicare system isn’t workable, period, doesn’t fly. Medicare itself is strong evidence that it is workable. Other countries have their own systems, too. Universal healthcare is entirely achievable.
Cost is the main target now. How to fund it, and are the benefits correct?
The benefits are possibly too generous, but not by a lot. They would be adjusted down in any serious negotiation to pass this bill. That would lower the costs, at least a little. But serious costs, the bulk, would remain.
To pay for this bill, or one like it, will require new revenues. Primarily, there will be new taxes imposed on some combination of employment and income. The tax increases will be offset by the reduction or elimination of individual and corporate costs for healthcare. There is a reasonable expectation that the tax burden will be less than the current burden of paying for healthcare, as there is widespread agreement that healthcare costs are artificially high.
People don’t want to pay taxes. That’s mostly a function of an anti-American narrative built by the right wing. ‘Taxation is theft,’ and other such nonsense. Taxation is debt. It is owed, not taken. Norquist doesn’t say to the restaurateur after his meal, ‘I want you to sign this pledge saying you’ll never adjust the cost of your food.’
More importantly, within the range of contemplatable taxes (i.e., up to the actual revenue needed to fund government), tax isn’t a problem. It’s a distortion in the minds of the wealthy that has led to such fear of taxes, even to the point where they are happy to overspend on a necessity like healthcare to avoid a lesser tax. That sort of distortion begs correction.
Given the inability of the Republican party to offer an alternative proposal that could even pretend to be universal, Medicare for All or some other system will happen. Taxes will be raised to pay for it. If the Republicans don’t like that, their only possible move is to formulate a state-level plan that ensures universal coverage. They will have to fight like hell, and with haste, to get it enacted in all 50 states before the Democrats have a chance to set up a national healthcare system. They will need to solve portability between states, too.
But they have run the clock out on not moving the nation to universal coverage.