March 7, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 41 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session
All in Senate sectionPrev16 of 59Next
Medicare (Executive Session); Congressional Record Vol. 165, No. 41
(Senate - March 07, 2019)
Text available as:
Formatting necessary for an accurate reading of this text may be shown by tags (e.g., <DELETED> or <BOLD>) or may be missing from this TXT display. For complete and accurate display of this text, see the PDF.
[Pages S1720-S1721] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] Medicare Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I am sure everyone remembers the Democrats' ObamaCare promise: ``If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.'' That promise was named PolitiFacts' ``Lie of the Year'' in 2013 after it became clear that millions of Americans would not, in fact, be able to keep their healthcare plans. There are no worries about being deceived on the question of keeping your insurance this time around because Democrats are loudly and proudly announcing their intention of getting rid of private insurance with their Medicare for All plan. At a CNN townhall in February, the junior Senator from Vermont was asked: ``Will these people be able to keep their health insurance plans, their private plans through their employers, if there is a Medicare for All program that you endorse?'' The answer of the Senator from Vermont was no. Another Democratic candidate for President, the junior Senator from New York, was recently asked: ``Should ending private insurance, as we know it, be a Democratic . . . goal? And do you think it is an urgent goal?'' Her response: ``Oh yeah, it is a goal . . . an urgent goal.'' If you like your health insurance, you definitely will not be able to keep it. In fact, the employer-sponsored insurance that you have today would be illegal under the Democrats' plan. In the minds of Democrats, Americans are supposed to be enthusiastic about Medicare for All because it would give them free healthcare. The problem, of course, is it will not really be free. Americans are still going to be paying for healthcare; it will just be in the form of much higher taxes. A left-leaning think tank modeled a version of the Medicare for All plan proposed by the junior Senator from Vermont and found that it would cost a staggering $32 trillion over 10 years. To put that in perspective, the entire Federal budget for 2019 is less than $5 trillion. That is Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, defense spending, education spending, law enforcement, infrastructure-- everything. In other words, Democrats are talking about increasing Federal spending by more than 60 percent each year just for healthcare. One Medicare expert estimates that doubling the amount of individual and corporate income tax collected would not be enough to cover the cost of Medicare for All. I don't know about my Democratic colleagues, but I don't know a lot of working families who could afford to have their tax bill literally double. Of course, this is assuming that the cost of the program would be limited to $32 trillion. The Medicare for All proposal the House Democrats released last week could substantially exceed the $32 trillion estimate because, unlike the Vermont Senator's plan, it includes funding for long-term care, a notoriously expensive part of the healthcare system. Democrats' last attempt to have the government fund long-term care fell apart before it was even implemented because the program was not financially viable. It is not just the cost of Medicare for All that is completely unrealistic; the timeline for implementation is as well. House Democrats' proposal would put every American on Medicare for All within 2 years. We have 2 years to completely do away with healthcare as we know it and create an entirely new healthcare program to cover almost every single American. I am sure most Americans remember the fiasco that was ObamaCare implementation. The Obama administration had 3\1/2\ years to get ObamaCare up and running, and they couldn't even build a working website in that amount of time. The ObamaCare exchanges were intended only to cover a tiny fraction of the number of people who would be covered under Medicare for All. The idea that the Federal Government could smoothly transition all Americans over to an entirely new government-run healthcare program in 2 years is absolutely ludicrous. Making the attempt would cause Americans an incredible amount of pain. Every aspect of this proposal would cause Americans an incredible amount of pain. There are the heavy taxes that would be required to even partially pay for [[Page S1721]] this program and the bureaucracy and inefficiency that would come with any government attempt to take over healthcare. Then there is the rationing of care that would inevitably come along. Democrats are promising that these would be plans with generous coverage, but what happens when Democrats don't have the money to pay for that coverage? Well, they can raise taxes higher, of course. Yet they will also undoubtedly turn to the rationing of care that we have seen in other countries with socialized medicine. The majority leader noted on the floor last week that Britain's National Health Service canceled 25,000 surgeries in the first quarter of last year alone. I could go on. I could talk about the long wait times Americans would experience under Medicare for All. I could talk about the fact that the Democrats' proposal would end the prohibition on government funding for abortion, meaning that your tax dollars would go toward ending the lives of preborn babies, whether you want them to or not. I can talk about the threat that Medicare for All represents for seniors because, make no mistake, this program would do away with Medicare as we know it and the promises that have been made to seniors in this country. Seniors would receive care under the new plan, but it would not be the plan they signed up for, and there is no guarantee that they would receive the benefits the Democrats are promising. If I went on about all the ways that Medicare for All is a bad idea, none of my colleagues would have a chance to speak for the rest of the day or probably tomorrow, for that matter, either. Suffice it to say that Medicare for All would be a very bad deal for the American people. Let's hope that our colleagues across the aisle halt their mad rush toward socialism before the American people get stuck with this government-run nightmare. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
All in Senate sectionPrev16 of 59Next