Why We Need Medicare For All Summary

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Senator Bernie Sanders wrote a New York Times piece entitled “Why We Need Medicare for All” to persuade the general public to support a bill (called Medicare for All). While I believe Sen. Sanders’ overall desire for universal affordable healthcare is a valiant one and many of his points--on their surface--seem to make sense intuitively, his arguments are based more so on emotion than logic and I fervently disagree with his premises. In this paper I will briefly summarize Bernie’s premises and argument style, explain why I disagree with his stances and provide evidence as to why his plan will not work, and propose an alternate solution to socialized healthcare. Senator Sanders lays out the main ideas of his argument in his introductory paragraphs. …show more content…

One human right cannot impede on that of another. Take freedom for example. In the healthcare case, freedom to access healthcare is a human right (i.e. it would be wrong for the government to prohibit a certain party to access life-saving healthcare). It is not, however, a human right that the service of healthcare be provided for you, because that would diminish the rights of others. It would either increase taxes substantially (I’ll examine exactly how much of an increase momentarily) and therefore diminish the right to others’ private property, or force healthcare providers to care for the sick without compensation. A parallel example is food and shelter. While necessary for life, it would not be moral for someone to knock on your door and demand that you allow them to stay in your house and provide them food. If someone asked for this service and you charitably gave it to them, that is completely fine, the problem arises when it is forced upon you by the government or anyone …show more content…

The Urban Institute, which leans toward liberal policies, scored Bernie’s plan as causing an increase in healthcare spending of $32 trillion over 10 years, or an average of $3.2 trillion per year. (Urban Institute, The Sanders Single-Payer Health Care Plan: The Effect on National Health Expenditures and Federal and Private Spending). To put that number in perspective, the total amount of income tax currently generated in the United States is $1.5 trillion. Just to fund the first 10 years of this plan, there would need to be an over 100% increase in federal income taxes. Bernie has not commented on how much it would cost thereafter but there is little reason to expect anything but increases as our population grows and people live longer. I have now argued against Mr. Sanders’ plan on a moral as well as a practical basis, but I have not provided an alternative way to improve our current system. I believe that the way to make healthcare affordable for all is to allow a similar degree freedom in the healthcare industry that we do for other markets. Think about technology. It is a highly unregulated industry and the cost of goods and services in that sector have diminished

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