Partisan Healthcare Means Americans Will Die

Talk about a serious cause for worry. Imagine waking up to find that most of the Democrats running for president along with the New York Times all agree with something you’ve been saying for months.

Ever since she first suggested universal government-run health care, I’ve predicted Elizabeth Warren’s Medicare-For-All scheme would be a disaster for the American economy and our way of life.

It seems most of the Democrat candidates agree. Biden’s campaign said Warren’s $9 trillion tax to pay for her plan “will fall on American workers.” Many of the candidates have taken issue with the fact that her plan outlaws private health insurance. Even Bernie Sanders says Warren’s plan is too regressive, and will “have a very negative impact on creating those jobs.”

While the other Democrat candidates nit-pick Warren’s plan on the margins, most medical professionals are even more critical. Their arguments mostly center on the following:

1. Compensation to physicians and health care providers under Medicare doesn’t even cover their hard costs. As a result, any plan that nationalizes Medicare compensation at current levels or below will lead to a massive exodus of health care workers from medicine. Just like in Canada, Britain, and every other country with government health care, the shortage of physicians, nurses, and technicians will lead to long waits, less access, and worse care. People will die.
2. Medical personnel aren’t the only ones who get shortchanged with Warren’s plan; so do hospitals, clinics, and labs. Without the private patients who subsidize those on Medicare, many of these facilities will be forced to close. Those that remain open will need to cut payroll and slash overhead costs. They’ll ration service, prioritize some patients over others, and leave the sickest patients without any care at all. More people will die.
3. Illegals receive equal access to medical services, taking critical resources away from Americans. Even more people will die.

Warren claims her plan will cost only $52 trillion dollars over the first 10 years -- some $7 trillion less than even the liberal Urban Institute suggests it will cost. Other, more neutral analysts, have suggested when you add in the cost of lost jobs, the actual price of Warren’s plan will exceed $65 trillion.

How does she pay for it all? Well, she starts by saying all the money government currently spends on health care would go into the pot, including what’s spent on veteran’s health. The liberal Urban institute says that leaves $34 trillion needed in new federal funds. Warren disputes that estimate and insists the shortfall comes to a measly $20.5 trillion.

How does she make up the difference? Warren proposes she’ll pick up $9 trillion when all the money currently paid by business in health care premiums are added to the pot. Likewise, she estimates that state and local governments will add to the federal pot all of the approximately $6 trillion they spend on Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Warren claims at least $6 trillion of the remaining shortfall will be raised by increasing the wealth tax on the assets of billionaires from her initial proposal of 3% annually to 6%. She further projects recovering $2.3 trillion from improved tax enforcement.

Meanwhile, Warren claims that all the premiums, co-pays, deductibles and other out-of-pocket expenses Americans currently pay would drop to zero under her plan. That’s an enormous new net cost to the government of some $10 trillion over 10 years.

If you’ve been keeping track, you’ll see that to cover her shortfall, Warren has to make a number of other assumptions no one else’s conscience apparently allows them to assume. Such assumptions forecast far slower growth in medical costs, reductions in paperwork and administrative costs, even lower levels of reimbursement to health care providers.

In addition to the nutty funding plan that both makes a mockery of math, and ignores economic reality, under her proposal 177 million Americans who like their health care plan will lose it. Warren bans private health insurance because she’s convinced she knows better.

But even if there were no difficulties with funding, her plans, or eliminating options for Americans, there remains the minor detail regarding the wisdom of putting the federal government in charge of your health care.

I don’t know about you, but the idea of putting the same partisan hacks in charge of healthcare who brought us impeachment, incivility, and rancor causes more than a little pause. Actually, the thought of putting our health care in the hands of Adam Schiff, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Nancy Pelosi terrifies me. NO thank you!

There’s absolutely no question that with the federal government in charge of healthcare, costs will go up, wait times will increase, innovation will decline, quality will suffer, and access will fall.

In short, Americans will die.

Elizabeth Warren believes we will exchange our freedom for government security. We’ll willingly surrender control of our lives to partisan politicians and federal bureaucrats. I pray she’s wrong, and that the more Americans see of their politicians in Washington, the more they will be convinced those best able to care for their families and themselves are them.

If I’m wrong, it’s pretty clear looking at the results from government run health care systems in other countries, Americans will die.