The “Medicare for All” legislation Andy Caldwell attacks in his July 3 column fortunately does not exist in the outside world. For starters, the Medicare for All bills in the House and Senate not only cover everything in current Medicare but also the added Advantage benefits beneficiaries now have to pay extra for.
Since hardly anyone is going to take the trouble to read Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s HR 1384, or Bernie Sanders’ parallel Senate bill, it is easy to make false claims about what they do or don’t contain. It has also been easy to claim, as Mr. Caldwell does, that Medicare for All would underpay and put all our hospitals out of business. But if that were true, there would be no hospitals in Canada, England or Europe, not to mention Japan and Taiwan, where the cost of health care is half what it is in the U.S.
And, if Andy is worried about Medicare going broke, what you do is enroll everyone in the program, so the young and healthy pay more into the system than the old and sick are taking out — something that should have been done a long time ago. If Mr. Caldwell is concerned about where all the health care dollars are going to come from, well, Elizabeth Warren has a plan for that. Just ask Jeff Bezos.
