NEWNow you can listen to Fox News articles!
After 43 days, the government shutdown is over. After President Donald Trump illegally and callously cut off SNAP benefits to desperate Americans, including 16 million children, 42 million frightened people will be able to put food on their tables again. Federal employees will be paid. And, hopefully, airline schedules will return to normal.
But here's what will also happen: At a time when we already pay by far the highest prices in the world for health care, tens of millions' insurance premiums will skyrocket and 15 million will be stripped of the coverage they now have. As a result, studies tell us that 50,000 Americans will die unnecessarily each year. The closure is over. Pain, suffering and death begins.
And all of this is happening in an economy that is already rigged. The rich are getting much richer while working families are finding it increasingly difficult to survive.
SEN DICK DURBIN: DEMOCRATS FIGHT TO PROTECT HEALTH CARE AS TRUMP AND REPUBLICANS PLAY SHUTDOWN
Here's the good news:
If you are Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, you are $163 billion richer since Trump was elected. And better yet, he's on his way to becoming the world's first billionaire by having Tesla build millions of robots that, by the way, will decimate high-paying jobs across our country.
But it's not just about Musk. The other billionaires who sat behind Trump at his inauguration, people like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, are also doing phenomenally well. In fact, in a time of enormous income and wealth inequality, the top 1 percent now own more wealth than the bottom 93 percent, corporate profits are soaring, and CEOs are receiving enormous compensation packages.
Here's the bad news:
For those of you who are not rich, chances are you are struggling to make ends meet. Today, 60 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Millions of working families are finding it increasingly difficult to pay for housing, healthcare, childcare, education, or even food. Unfortunately, 22 percent of seniors are trying to make a living on $15,000 a year or less. Nearly half of older workers have no retirement savings. And most young people will probably experience a lower standard of living than their parents. Shamefully, in the richest nation on Earth, we now have the highest rates of child and senior poverty of almost every major country.
And it's about to get a lot worse as a result of the continuing resolution recently signed into law by President Trump.
Let me give you some examples.
The average 60-year-old couple earning about $85,000 a year will see their monthly premiums rise from $602 to $2,647, a quadrupling of rates and an increase of about $24,500 a year. When you add out-of-pocket expenses, many of these couples will pay close to 50% of their income for medical care. That's crazy. That is unsustainable. People just can't do it.
The average family of four earning $44,000 a year will see their monthly premiums triple, from $85 to $253.
The average individual earning $32,000 a year will see their monthly premiums also triple, going from $58 to $180.
So that? Why leave 15 million people without health care and double premiums for more than 20 million? The answer: pay a $1 trillion tax break for the richest 1%. Yes. Musk gets a tax cut. Millions of people lose their health care. This may make sense to someone, but not to me.
President Trump and some Republicans in Congress have complained that the Affordable Care Act is not an efficient way to provide health care. They are right. Unfortunately, what they propose is even worse.
While details are still sketchy, they want to eliminate Affordable Care Act tax credits, which average $6,500, and send checks to about 20 million Americans to purchase health care on their own.
Here's the problem: How can someone who needs $150,000 a year in cancer treatment get the care they need with a $6,500 check? What is a pregnant mother supposed to do with a $6,500 check when the average cost of a birth in the United States is $20,000? How can someone who suffers a heart attack be able to afford a $100,000 hospital stay with only $6,500?
This absurd proposal would lead to more medical bankruptcies, more unaffordable health care, and more Americans without the health care they desperately need.
So where do we go from here?
In the short term, we must expand the Affordable Care Act tax credits to avoid massive premium increases. We need to rescind the $1 trillion cuts to Medicaid and the ACA so that 15 million Americans don't lose their health care. Too many people will suffer and die if we do not take these measures.
Long term, as a Congress and as a nation, we need to have a serious discussion about the kind of health care system we want. These are some of the questions that need to be answered:
Should we remain the only major country on Earth that does not guarantee healthcare for all as a human right?
What can we learn from other countries that provide healthcare to their entire population at half the cost per capita?
How can we provide high-quality health care to every man, woman and child in our country in a cost-effective manner?
Should the primary function of our healthcare system be to enable insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry to make huge profits?
In my opinion, the answer to these questions is not complicated. We need to improve Medicare and expand it to cover all Americans.
And that's precisely what the Medicare for All Act, which I introduced with 15 of my Senate colleagues and more than 100 House members, would do over a four-year transition period.
How does Medicare for All work?
It would provide comprehensive health care to all Americans and end all premiums, deductibles, copays and out-of-pocket costs. It would create a much simpler and more efficient system. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Medicare for All would save $650 billion a year, primarily by eliminating the extraordinary amount of administrative waste and profiteering by insurance companies. There would be no more “networks” and every American would have the freedom to choose their own doctors and hospitals. Medicare for All would also do a much better job of keeping Americans healthy by placing greater emphasis on disease prevention and primary care. It would be funded through a progressive tax system that would require the wealthy and large corporations to pay their fair share in taxes.
In the first year, Medicare benefits for seniors would be expanded to include dental care, vision coverage and hearing aids, and the age of eligibility would be lowered to 55. All children under 18 would also enter the system.
In the second year, the eligibility age would be lowered to 45 years; in the third year, to 35. By the fourth year, every man, woman, and child in the United States would be covered by Medicare for All.
Guaranteeing health care as a human right is not only necessary from a moral and economic point of view. At a time when the overwhelming majority of Americans understand that our current system is broken, dysfunctional, and cruel, it is time for us to move in a very different direction. Medicare for all is the answer.
Let's do it.
