Leading Democratic presidential candidate U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has officially unveiled her “Medicare for All” plan. This program is based on fantasy financing. According to Warren, it will cost $52 trillion over ten years, but a middle-class tax increase will not be needed.
Instead, the plan will be partially funded by hiking taxes $20 trillion on the top 1% of Americans, employers, major corporations and financial transactions. Not only will this plan devastate Wall Street, but it will also be a major drain on our economy. Many employers will not be able to afford these additional costs, so jobs will be lost, and wages will be reduced.
Amazingly, Warren claims that middle-class Americans will realize cost reductions of $11 trillion. She maintains that if her plan is implemented, no one will have “to pay for premiums or copays or any of the other ways health insurance companies stick you with the bill.”
The Massachusetts Senator believes that her plan will solve the problem for 87 million Americans who are uninsured or have inadequate health insurance. However, this was the same promise that former President Barack Obama made when the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010. Sadly, after nine years of Obama’s plan, our country’s healthcare system is still in crisis.
Instead of providing a workable solution, such as repealing the Affordable Care Act, Warren wants to terminate all employer-based health insurance for 158 million Americans. She does not care if Americans are happy with their current health insurance plan, it will be ended, and everyone will be forced to participate in “Medicare for All.”
Her pledge that this $52 trillion plan will not hurt middle-class Americans is truly ridiculous. Not only will millions of average wage Americans lose their jobs or see their hours reduced, but they will also have to increase their dependence on government assistance for survival.
There is no doubt that at least 2 million Americans will become unemployed as a result of “Medicare for All” since health insurance companies will be eliminated. Incredibly, Warren "claims that “No one gets left behind. Some of the people currently working in health insurance will work in other parts of insurance. In life insurance, in auto insurance, in car insurance."
Warren is a typical socialist who does not understand the private sector and believes the answer lies in bigger government. In contrast to a plan that promotes private sector job growth, Warren wants another gargantuan government program that will drain resources from the private sector.
This $52 trillion plan follows the Democratic Party’s embrace of the $93 trillion “Green New Deal,” another total unrealistic boondoggle. In total, Warren supports spending an additional $145 trillion on two enormous government expansions while promoting the fiction that the middle-class will not have to pay any additional taxes. To say this promise is disingenuous is an understatement.
If enacted, Warren’s “Medicare for All” plan will be catastrophic for our growing economy. Under President Trump, the U.S. economy has added 6.3 million jobs, while over 6 million people have left the food stamp program due to their improving financial situation. Under the last liberal President, Barack Obama, 10.7 million Americans were added to the food stamp rolls. This shows the difference between policies that grow government versus policies that grow the private sector.
Trump has achieved his successes by supporting a large tax cut plan, along with massive reductions in government regulations. The President’s pro-America trade policies have also helped, but if Congress ever passes the USMCA agreement, even more of a boost will be injected into the economy.
Warren takes a dramatically different approach to the economy than Trump. Her plan will penalize businesses, wealthy individuals and Wall Street. These “top 1%” are the ones who own businesses and employ Americans.
If these wealthy Americans face dramatic tax increases, they will not be able to invest as much money in the private sector. This will divert resources to the inefficiencies of government bureaucracies.
Under Warren’s plan, a huge government entity will be created to operate this program. This should not reassure any Americans. In our federal government, 2 million Americans are employed, many of them are good people who work hard, but they operate in a fatally flawed system.
Very few, if any, of our government departments are efficiently managed. As evidence, let’s examine the operations of the United States Postal Service or the Veterans Administration. The problems with these bureaucratic entities are impossible to ignore.
Warren wants to add an even bigger government program, stripping $52 trillion from more productive uses, and diverting it to provide government managed healthcare. Not only will this devastate our economy, but it will also ruin our healthcare system.
It is a plan that is doomed to fail and one that our country should avoid at all costs. The best way to accomplish that goal is to make sure that U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren is not elected president of the United States in 2020.