Democrats Should Not Get a Single Vote from Seniors

Democrats Should Not Get a Single Vote from Seniors

Would seniors vote for a party that has PROMISED to destroy Medicare? Maybe—if they believe the lies of Democrats and Socialists. SO, IT’S IMPORTANT TO SHARE THIS. Important passages are in red.

Democrats have gotten behind Socialist Bernie Sanders’s deranged plan, the Medicare for All Act (M4A), which is nothing more than single-payer health care—a long-time leftist dream for America; but a nightmare for those in other nations who have it.

Professional liars and Socialists Sen. Sanders—no, that’s not the fried chicken guy—and candidate Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez claim that Medicare for All would actually cost LESS than Medicare for seniors or disabled alone costs now. The latter actually told CNN’s Chris Cuomo, on August 8^{th t}hat a study “show[ed] that Medicare-for-all is actually much cheaper than the current system that we pay right now.” Sanders said in a videothat the plan “would save the American people $2 trillion over a 10-year period.”

Of course, any fool knows that’s mathematically impossible. To support their ludicrous promises, these hucksters cite a study titled, “The Costs of a National Single-Payer Healthcare System,” published by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Alas, like everything the Socialists say in order to sell their lunatic agenda, this is a lie: the study doesn’t say that at all.

The true cost of M4A

The paper clearly says the cost of Medicare for All would dwarf what we’re paying now to finance health care insurance for seniors and disabled alone:

The Medicare for All Act (M4A), would, under conservative estimates, increase federal budget commitments by approximately $32.6 trillion during its first 10 years of full implementation (2022–2031)…. This projected increase in federal healthcare commitments would equal approximately 10.7 percent of GDP in 2022, rising to nearly 12.7 percent of GDP in 2031 and further thereafter. Doubling all currently projected federal individual and corporate income tax collections would be insufficient to finance the added federal costs of the plan

But, the study adds, “It is likely that the actual cost of M4A would be substantially greater than has been estimated from its legislative text. M4A text requires that healthcare providers —hospitals, physicians, and others—will be reimbursed for all patients at ‘current Medicare payment rates.’ [Read the Bill, page 13, line 17.]

That last part sounds good, right? But it’s not, because those rates will be reduced under current law.

Sanders based this rule on a projection by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), that Medicare provider payments will be roughly 40 percent lower than those paid by private insurers during the first 10 years of M4A’s proposed implementation (by 2031.) [Figure 2, page 8]

However, CMS also predicted that Congress is likely to prevent those cuts, to ensure that Medicare beneficiaries will have keep their access to medical care:

Unfortunately, M4A would force all providers to be paid at the reduced Medicare rates. This would not only destroy Medicare as we know it, but would deal a sudden 40% cut to provider payments by private insurance companies, which will be outlawed under M4A:

“SEC. 104. PROHIBITION AGAINST DUPLICATING COVERAGE. 14 (a) IN GENERAL—It is unlawful for a private health insurer to sell health insurance coverage that duplicates the benefits provided under this Act.” [P. 9 of the Bill]. 

The planned destruction of Medicare

Obviously, many, many doctors would then refuse to accept Medicare patients—even seniors. That would reduce Medicare to an even lower status than Medicaid, now accepted by relatively few doctors—and not so many good ones. That, in turn, would force long waits for inferior care.

Please make sure any senior you know is aware of the Democrats’ plan to destroy Medicare and replace it with inferior care. It’s like mandating free food, but 50% of the food will be dirt.

What would the coverage under M4A be like?

First of all, on page 4, the Bill says:

“IN GENERAL—All individuals residing in the United States (including any territory of the United States) are covered under the Medicare For All Program.”

That means illegal aliens would be covered.

Why single payer can’t work

The basic flaw in “free” single-payer health care is that demand for that care is ever-increasing. The only way to control costs is by limiting access to care, through various types of rationing. There’s an easy way to see what life might be like under M4A. Just look at what Obama and the Dems did, in the heady days when they had full control—which they now seek to regain.

In 2010, Obama appointed “rationing advocate Donald Berwick to become the director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.”

Life News described Berwick this way:

“Berwick is an outspoken admirer of the British National Health Service and its rationing arm, the National Institute for Clinical Effectiveness (NICE).

“During a 2008 speech to British physicians, Berwick said ‘I am romantic about the National Health Service. I love it,’ and call[ed] it ‘generous, hopeful, confident, joyous, and just.’”

Waiting to die

Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the CATO Institute wrote in the Daily Caller at the time just how joyous the British National Health Service (NHS) is:

Berwick was referring to a British health care system where 750,000 patients are awaiting admission to NHS hospitals.

Overall, more than half of British patients wait more than 18 weeks for care. Every year, 50,000 surgeries are canceled because patients become too sick on the waiting list to proceed.

Tanner described another single-payer feature, from the UK, which we’d be likely to see under M4A:

With the creation of NICE, the U.K. government has effectively put a dollar amount to how much a citizen’s life is worth. To be exact, each year of added life is worth approximately $44,305 (£30,000). Of course, this is a general rule and, as NICE chairman Michael Rawlins points out, the agency has sometimes approved treatments costing as much as $70,887 (£48,000) per year of extended life.

To Dr. Berwick, this was exactly how it should be. “NICE is not just a national treasure,” he says, “it is a global treasure.”

And Dr. Berwick wanted to bring NICE-style rationing to this country. “It’s not a question of whether we will ration care,” he said in a magazine interview for Biotechnology Healthcare, “It is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”

Here’s another charming method of cost-cutting in the UK:

A license to kill

Costs would also be moderated by saving money on care for the most expensive group, by using euthanasia. There were frequent reports in the UK of elderly patients with terminal illnesses in hospitals being starved to death and dying of thirst. Relatives came to visit a grandmother only to find the bed empty. They were told that she had died the day before. Don’t believe it? Google “Liverpool Care Pathway.”

This was a program for delivering palliative care to people with a terminal illness. It included govt. incentives to end the lives of such people by refusing them fluids. Never mind that sometimes they weren’t terminal at all, or lived much longer than expected, sometimes after development of new treatments.

The Daily Mail reported that “almost two-thirds of NHS trusts using the LCP have received ‘payouts’ totaling millions of pounds for hitting targets related to its use.”

The Mail called it “a pathway to euthanasia.”

After a series of scathing Daily Mail articles, the Liverpool Pathway was shut down in 2013. It had been the standard of care since the 1990s. PS: the plan put forward to replace the LCP was even worse, encouraging hospital staff to guess who might be terminal, thence to withhold fluids.

That’s the system lauded by Obama’s appointee to supervise Medicare and Medicaid in 2010, and clearly the Democrats’ intended plan for America—if we give them the power. (After serving a year as a recess appointee, which doesn’t require confirmation by the Senate, Obama re-nominated Berwick. But he resigned when it was clear he would not be approved in upcoming confirmation hearings.)

This plan to permanently destroy Medicare is why Democrats should not get a single vote from seniors—or from anyone else.

Tales from the UK’s Vault of Horror

• UK socialism in action: patients waiting on trolleys for over 50 hours
• NHS makes patients wait unnecessarily in order to avoid “raising expectations”
• NHS refuses to treat woman who is starving to death
• Former NHS hospital director dies on surgery waiting list
• Women gives birth after NHS nurses send her home from hospital
• UK patients denied treatment as “public option” system makes cutbacks
• How do governments control costs in a single-payer health care systems?
• NHS patients giving birth in waiting rooms
• What does universal health care really mean?
• How well is government-run health care working out in the UK?
• British national health care system prepares to cut 20 billion dollars
• NHS kills a man’s wife by delaying cancer treatment for 7 months
• How is socialized medicine working out in the UK and Canada?
• Police probe death of NHS hospital patient who begged for water
• How government-run health care leads to euthanasia
• NHS employees leapfrog their own waiting lists to access private health care
• NHS delays treatment for broken arm for four months and counting
• One in six patients misdiagnosed by NHS
• The deadly consequences of rationing health care
• Health care in Britain: question a doctor and lose your children
• How death panels work in the British health care system
• One million NHS patients receive brutally inadequate health care
• 4000 NHS patients denied hospital beds to give birth to children
• Woman gives birth on pavement after NHS refuses to send an ambulance
• NHS hospitals infested with a dozen varieties of vermin
• 39-year old woman is prescribed painkillers and dies after 11-minute NHS exam

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