Two exchanges on healthcare, producing two dishonest answers that border on outright, willful lies. Let's start with the leader of the House progressive caucus, who assured an interviewer that paying for her crew's healthcare scheme would only take a handful of "small tax increases" on the "very wealthiest." This is just utterly and completely untrue:
How would we pay for Medicare for All? @RepJayapal says 'any number of small tax increases on the very wealthiest' would work, adding 'the average family would probably pay 14% less in total costs because they are not paying out-of-pocket every single time they go to the doctor.' pic.twitter.com/lQBjWLbz0Q
— Firing Line with Margaret Hoover (@FiringLineShow) August 9, 2019
The ten-year price tag of her own bill -- which she admits would eliminate one-to-two million jobs, and would make 180 million Americans' private healthcare plans illegal -- is an estimated $32 to $40 trillion. That's roughly in the neighborhood of doubling the entire federal budget. Anyone who believes that can be covered by a couple of tweaks at the top of the food chain deserves months-long waits for needed care that their fantasy would bring about. As one top expert put it, the government could literally double every single American's income taxes, and double the corporate tax, and still fall woefully short of single-payer healthcare's low-end price estimates. "Now, to be clear, these would not be the total costs of Medicare for All," he said. "These would the federal government's net new cost above and beyond currently projected federal health obligations." So long as progressives insist on deceiving the public about the true costs of their stunningly expensive plan, we'll keep reminding you of the crippling mix of across-the-board tax hikes that would be necessary to finance it:
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The Mercatus Study -- like others -- shows that "Medicare for All" would require a federal tax hike of roughly 10% of GDP even after capturing state govt. savings.
— Brian Riedl (@Brian_Riedl) July 30, 2018
But capturing the savings to families into a "single-payer tax" is not easy -- which is why Sanders comes up short pic.twitter.com/Etfjk22sQc
Perhaps the most efficient way to achieve that would be to combine the top three revenue generators listed: Raise the payroll tax (paid for by workers and employers) by ten percentage points for everyone, impose a brand new 20 percent national VAT/sales tax, and hike income tax rates across the board by ten percentage points. Not one of those three; all of those three.
Meanwhile, here's Kamala Harris getting grilled by an Iowa senior citizen about her shambolic healthcare plan(s):
Asked about how she'd pay for her single-payer proposal, Harris reverts to a spin on her typical nonsense answer. The woman then urges her to leave the existing system alone, and not to "mess with" it. Harris replies, "I want to make sure that it’s the way you like it...I promise you that. I won’t mess with the health care that you have.” This pledge is simply not true for tens of millions of people. The single-payer bill she's co-sponsored would strip away 180 million Americans' private coverage, making it against the law. Harris has recently called for a "transition" period on this front, but admits that her policy would lead to everyone losing private and employer-based plans. And those on Medicare as it exists, which is already careening toward insolvency, would have to pay much higher taxes in order for everyone else in the country to be funneled into a single, centralized program. The harsh reality for Democrats is that their Big Idea comes with massive costs and massive disruptions -- and the more voters know about both, the less likely they are to support it. I'll leave you with this:
New Kaiser poll: *86%* of Americans with private, employer-based plans “rate their own health insurance coverage positively.” https://t.co/Acmz8P2btx
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) August 1, 2019
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