America's Benefit Specialist August/September 2023

AS I SEE IT

EPIC ERRORS

Bernie just doesn’t give up. His new and improved Medicare-for-All 2023 bill would be an even more ag gressive government takeover of U.S. healthcare. Now that Sanders chairs the Senate’s powerful Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, expect an even stronger push than last session when he chaired the Budget Committee. It seems incredible that after government’s epic errors during COVID, anyone would think we should turn ALL of healthcare over to the federal government. But, in a mere 131 pages, Senator Sanders would do just that—completely outlawing private insurance, replacing existing government health programs, including Medicare, with this new socialist system, and running what is now a $4.1 trillion U.S. healthcare system out of Washington. This bill, co-sponsored in the House by Representatives Pramila Jayapal and Debbie Dingell, isn’t to be taken lightly. It has the support of nearly half of House Democrats and 14 senators, plus a long list of outside organizations. There is no chance it will reach the floor of the Senate this session, and the bill won’t even get a hearing in the House, but Sanders is playing the long game and waiting until political forces are favorably aligned—and taking baby steps when ever possible toward his vision. Which is why we have to keep educating the American people about the dangers of this approach. Dr. Scott Atlas of Stanford University’s Hoover Institu tion provides the best and most current factual arguments against socialized medicine we’ve seen, citing experience in other countries: • Canadians with already diagnosed heart disease wait a median of 16.4 weeks for their first treatment. For neurosurgery after already seeing a doctor, they wait 58.9 weeks—more than one year. • The UK’s Institute for Public Policy projected it will take seven years for cancer chemotherapy missed during COVID and 12 years for missed radiation-therapy backlogs to clear. Many will die waiting. Why follow this path when the U.S. has had consistently superior survivals from cancer than single-payer systems, a fact Europeans begrudgingly admit, as well as best treatment outcomes for diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke and heart disease? “Government-run healthcare has failed the world over,” Dr. Atlas writes. “It’s time for individuals to stop politicians from disregarding facts while recklessly imposing their power, and instead demand control of the healthcare dollar and choices on how to spend it.” Sanders says he wants “to end the international embarrassment of the U.S. being the only major country that doesn’t guarantee healthcare.” But that is also wrong. We have dozens of major federal and state healthcare programs that target care and provide coverage to specific populations so that virtually everyone has access to health coverage. And anyone can show up anytime at any hospital in America to get emergency care, regardless of ability to pay. But Bernie is pressing on. Soon Sanders’ HELP Committee is expected to mark up and send to the floor a pandemic-preparedness act where he is expected to add an amendment that would impose aggressive price controls on drugs, medical devices and other medical technologies. Sanders wants to cap the U.S. cost for any product supported by the Biomed ical Advanced Research and Development Authority or the Centers for Disease

By Grace-Marie Turner The Galen Institute New Alexandria, Virginia gracemarie@galen.org

20 ABS | benefitspecialistmagazine.com