Bernie Sanders will have a Single Payer / Medicare for all plan
Bernie Sanders appeared on MSNBC recently following his major Wall Street speech in New York. He was asked many policy questions on both Wall Street, guns, and health care.
Mark Halperin asked Bernie Sanders if he will release a single payer health care plan/ Medicare for all plan before the Iowa caucuses. Sanders started his answer by educating Halperin and the viewers about a few facts that thus far the mainstream media have allowed the GOP and insurance companies to demagogue.
“First of all as I know you know,” Bernie Sanders said. “We spend far more per capita on health care than do the people of any other nation. We spend close to three times what the British spend to provide health care to all people, fifty percent more than the French, far more than the Canadians. So what we will do is come up with a proposal that does two things. Number one, have the United States join the rest of the industrialized world guaranteeing health care to all people. You may have seen in the papers recently that there are so many people in this country not only who have no health insurance, twenty nine million, but who are under insured with these huge deductibles that really keep them from going to the doctor. And yet we pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs and far more per capita on health care than any other country. So yeah. We will have a proposal, probably before Iowa,”
Mark Halperin then tried to trip up Bernie Sanders on the cost. “I know you say there is money in the system,” Halperin said. “But will there be new revenues, taxes of any sort, fees of any sort?”
That is the trick question used to put the fear of higher taxes into the psyche of Americans who would then think single payer is expensive. Bernie Sanders was ready with the appropriate reply.
“One of the things I want to deal with,” Bernie Sanders said. “And I have seen Hillary Clinton do this. I have seen some of the media do it, ‘Oh, you are gonna raise taxes.’ What are we forgetting in that discussion? We are doing away with all health insurance premiums. So if you are paying fourteen thousand or sixteen thousand in private health insurance premiums and if, I do not know if I have to do it, I would raise your taxes and you would say wow I am paying eight thousand less for health care, it is a good deal.”
Halperin then asked if anyone would pay more for health care. His answer was straightforward. No. He said we would significantly reduce healthcare cost in America.
Bernie needed to go a little further in his explanation. Currently many Americans are insulated from seeing what their premiums really cost because it is the employer paying major portions.
Part of the wage stagnation in America is because employers must pay much higher health insurance premiums. If health care is decoupled from the employer it will significantly increase wages. If the insurance companies are removed from the equation, they charge up to 20% of premiums just to pay a bill and enrich a few people, that would further reduce cost. If drug companies who make money from patents on products developed with taxpayer dollars were reigned in, it would further bring down prescription drug cost. Lastly if medical school cost were reigned in, doctors would not have the overbearing cost of student loans and would be able to lower their own patient fees.
In effect remove insurance companies, bankers, and patent thieves from health care and it becomes affordable. Extricate those skimming profits for doing nothing towards making us healthy.