Speaking to a town hall on Monday night, Kamala Harris, the United States senator for California, has vowed to get rid of all private health care plans for nearly 150 million Americans if she is elected president.
When asked by CNN host, Jake Tapper, whether people who like their current health care plans could keep it under “Medicare for All” plan proposed by Harris, she indicated they could not; however, in turn, people would experience health care without any hassles or delays.
Harris told Tapper, “Well, listen, the idea is that everyone gets access to medical care. And you don’t have to go through the process of going through an insurance company, having them give you approval, going through the paperwork, all of the delay that may require.”
She continued, “Who among us has not had that situation?” “Where you got to wait for approval, and the doctor says, ‘Well I don’t know if your insurance company is going to cover this.’ Let’s eliminate all of that. Let’s move on.”
Former President Barack Obama constantly repeated many times throughout his tenure to promote the Affordable Care Act, so-called “ObamaCare.” He said, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.”
However, Politifact, the fast-checking website, eventually called Obama’s statement “Lie of the Year.” The websites noted that due to ObamaCare, millions of Americans received cancellation notices from their providers. It also noted that the Obama administration knew from the outset that its promise was not sustainable.
Harris was reluctant to follow Obama’s example.
Earlier this month, during her speech to officially launch her 2020 run, the senator declared that health care is a fundamental right and promised to serve her citizens by supporting “Medicare for All.”
In August 2017, she became the first United States Senate Democrat to support Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All” bill.
Several studies have estimated that the cost of health care spent by the government would increase by $25 trillion to approximately $35 trillion in a 10-year period. For example, one study that was released by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University found that Sanders’ program would cost around $32.6 trillion per year over a decade.
The New York Times in 2017 analyzed and evaluated nearly 74 million American citizens, who currently benefit from Medicaid, would potentially have to face higher taxes under the plan “Medicare for All.”
Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, NY Democratic Representative, explained that while the cost would increase for a shorter period, restructuring Medicare would yield sustained economic benefits, which would be possible by reducing administrative inadequacies, cutting prescription drug costs, and encouraging people to invest more money into the economy.
However, a senior strategist, Charles Blahous, has said Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez would need to make unrealistic assumptions when it comes to that conclusion, as increased demand for health care would offset any such administrative gains.
In fact, he criticized them for their comments that appeared to reflect a misunderstanding of his study. Also, the Washington Post and FactCheck have concluded that both the liberal politicians had actually misread the conclusions of the study. Harris stated, “There is no reason in a civil society that we have assault weapons around communities that can kill babies and police officers.” “Something like universal background checks — it makes perfect sense that you might want to know before someone can buy a weapon that can kill another human being, you might want to know have they been convicted of a felony where they committed violence? That’s just reasonable. You might want to know before they can buy that gun if a court has found them to be a danger to themselves or others. You just might want to know. That’s reasonable.”
