(Quin Hillyer, Liberty Headlines) Sentiment in the Democratic Party seems to be moving ever more strongly in favor of the push by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for single-payer, socialized medicine – but analysts are saying the stampede could be a lemming-like rush to political death, and some Senate Democrats are trying to avoid the cliff.
At The Morning Beacon, conservative columnist Matthew Continetti notes that 16 Democratic senators already have joined as co-sponsors of Sanders’s “Medicare for All Act of 2017,” which would create a completely government-run, “one-size-fits-all” medical system for the whole country. He then collected warningseven from hard-line liberal analysts about how their push for socialized medicine could blow up in their political faces.
The Urban Institute concluded that Sanders’s similar plan last year would cost a mind-boggling $32 trillion – yes, trillion – during the next decade, with taxes rising by $15 trillion and the debt therefore growing by another $17 trillion. (The costs for health-care alone would thus nearly double today’s $20 trillion debt, without taking into account a single dime of other federal spending.)
As Continetti noted, “The experiences of Vermont, whose single-payer system collapsed several years ago, and of California and New Jersey, whose true-blue legislatures can’t carry single payer across the finish line, and of Colorado, which voted overwhelmingly against a similar plan last year, suggest the tax increases necessary to sustain expanded coverage frighten even Democrats.”
The conservative America Rising Political Action Committee also stresses that theme:
“One group of Democratic Senators that won’t be well-represented on the list of co-sponsors are those Democrats running in states Hillary Clinton lost last year. Already Senators Joe Manchin, Sherrod Brown, Bill Nelson, Claire McCaskill, and Bob Casey are doing everything possible to disassociate themselves from Bernie’s extreme bill. ….
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