By Chris Woodward
More than 100 House Democrats have introduced a Medicare for All plan that not only hands over health care to the federal government but transitions from private insurance into this government-run system in just two years.
While some far-left Democrats endorse the view that health care is a right, Merrill Matthews of the Institute for Policy Innovation says Medicare for All won't come cheap, and he says it doesn't mirror your parents' or grandparents' Medicare benefits, either.
"This isn't the Medicare program. That goes away," he warns. "They have a government-run, single payer system where people pay taxes and the government pays for virtually everything, (and) in the newest plan, I think there is virtually no co-pay for anyone."
A Medicare for All plan introduced in recent years from Sen. Bernie Sanders would transition to that program over four years.
"They include some new provisions," Matthews advises, "including long-term care for people with disabilities and no one is able to opt-out of this system. So everybody has to be in."
When the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act became law in March, 2010, Democrats heralded the law as a life-saving measure for Americans who can't afford health insurance.
Democrats also warned Americans would die without it, so Republicans who opposed it were accused of not caring about fellow Americans to the point of ignoring their deaths for the benefit of health insurance companies.
Republicans, meanwhile, warned at the time that Democrats were really eyeing a single-payer health care system, which was ridiculed as right-wing fear mongering.
Almost 10 years later, Matthews recommends Republicans in 2019 better get their act together on health care.
"They still do not have a plan to replace anything like Obamacare," he explains. "Until they finally coalesce around a serious replacement, reform that they can sell and the public can say Yes,that sounds like something that would be better for me, they're just going to have a fit and they'll probably going to keep getting beat on health care."