The Real Threat to Seniors: Single Payer
No sooner had the president’s budget arrived on Capitol Hill last Monday than the demagoguery began. Within hours of the budget’s release, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) tweeted that “One party wants to expand Medicare and Medicaid and the other wants to cut them.” The facts, however, show a different contrast—one party attempting to keep a promise to seniors, and another abandoning that promise to fund other priorities.
First, the budget would not “cut” Medicare. As multiple administration officials explained during congressional hearings on the budget, Medicare spending would continue to rise every year under the president’s proposals. Only in a government town like Washington could lawmakers say with a straight face that a reduction in projected spending increases constitutes a “cut.”
Third, the budget proposals would yield tangible benefits to seniors through lower Medicare cost-sharing. A proposed rule released in July found that one of these changes would lower beneficiary co-payments by $150 million in one year. If enacted in full, seniors would see billions of dollars in savings over the ten-year budget window.
Fourth, and most importantly, legislation Schatz supports wouldn’t “expand” Medicare and Medicaid, it would eliminate them. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ single-payer bill, which Schatz has co-sponsored, would, in addition to ending Medicaid, liquidate the Medicare trust funds, using the proceeds to finance the new government-run program. As I noted last year, that makes Sanders’ bill, as well as similar legislation introduced in the House last month, not “Medicare for All” but “Medicare for None.”
That raid on the Medicare trust funds represents not just an accounting gimmick, but a statement of Democrats’ priorities—or, rather, the lack of them. Medicare has long-term funding problems, which the president’s budget attempts to address. But in using the Medicare trust funds as a piggy bank to finance a single-payer system—the full cost of which Democrats have no idea how to fund—the party shows how, in trying to provide all things to all people, it will abandon the most vulnerable.
Perhaps the best rebuttal to “Medicare for None” came from, of all people, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD). In a speech on the House floor in September 2009, Hoyer said:
At some point in time, my friends, we have to buck up our courage and our judgment and say, if we take care of everybody, we won’t be able to take care of those who need us most. That’s my concern. If we take care of everybody, irrespective of their ability to pay for themselves, the Ross Perots of America, frankly, the Steny Hoyers of America, then we will not be able to take care of those most in need in America.
Therein lies the true flaw in the left’s logic. Whereas the president’s budget would work to protect Medicare for vulnerable seniors, Schatz, Sanders, and their supporters would liquidate the Medicare trust fund to finance “free” health care for Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. The choice between the two paths seems as obvious as it is clear.
This post was originally published at The Federalist.