Bernie’s Not Wrong: Medicare for All is Sensible
I was watching the show Diagnosis on Netflix, in the show, a man who suffered debilitating brain injuries couldn’t afford his medical care. This is a more common problem than you might think. Millions of Americans Bernie Sanders in the last debates discussed Medicare for all. This is essentially a universal system where tax money would pay for healthcare instead of major insurance companies or worse, the uninsured patient. The system we have now is a complex patchwork of private insurance and marketplace plans that is overly complex and worsens the bureaucracy. Bernie rightly points out that every major wealthy country on Earth has a universal system and this is correct.
, that covers everyone and nearly every European nation has some form of universal healthcare. What’s interesting is that per capita, a majority of these countries are actually poorer than the U.S. compared to the for the U.S. . Somehow despite their relative poverty compared to the U.S, these countries with similar languages and cultures guarantee healthcare to all citizens. The Affordable Care Act tried to cover all Americans but was stripped down by Republicans and left as a shell with The blue and green are countries with universal plans and the yellow and orange are countries without universal plans. We’re in the same league as many of the poorest nations in Central Asia and South America.
Republicans don’t have an answer to cover all Americans. I haven’t seen any plan by them that would cover all Americans and Elon Musk’s stripping down of the government won’t help cover more Americans. The U.S. needs a new system that can cover all Americans at a fraction of the high cost we’re paying now compared to other countries. I have yet to see any politician other than Bernie suggest a universal plan that would cover all Americans. If a country like Canada, which per citizen is on average $30,000 poorer than the U.S., can afford universal healthcare then so can we.
It sounds complex to do this but there’s already a good system that applies to the elderly. Medicare is a decent preexisting system that could be extended to apply to any American and with a reduced eligibility age to nearly zero, it would help improve healthcare in the country. Medicare for all is what we need. Many other countries that pay less for healthcare have a form of it in one way or another and adding Medicare for all would make America healthier again.
