When Tom Price resigned from his Health Secretary position amid scandals regarding his usage of private jets, a door may have opened that not a lot of people realize: the push for universal healthcare may be back on.
Following two major congressional pushes to repeal and replace Obamacare, the skinny repeal and Graham-Cassidy bill, a Republican-controlled Congress still has failed to concretely replace the Obama led healthcare initiative that they hate so much. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senator Lindsey Graham’s massive influences from the healthcare industry naturally put them at the forefront of a repeal process. However, it could not lure Republican Senators like John McCain to vote in favor of said bill, amid the controversy behind it.
Tom Price was a catalyst for a repeal. As the Washington Post reported, Price had deep ties to both the healthcare industry (former surgeon) and Congress (former member and friend of Paul Ryan). But now that the man Trump hired to push Congress into a repeal is gone, people like Bernie Sanders need to capitalize before a replacement is hired.
Sanders’ Medicare-For-All bill, something that he reintroduced earlier this month, is a single-payer system that would effectively eliminate the private healthcare industry. Without the executive branch presenting an overwhelming influence over congress and the issue of healthcare, this is the time where a bill, that is widely opposed by a Republican controlled congress, could win over a vote due to the strong perception its getting thanks to celebrities like Jimmy Kimmel and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
This potential is incredibly important. The failed attempts by Congress to replace Obamacare, along with Trump’s early executive order that undermined Obamacare will make the American people more open for a conversation around universal healthcare, even if they don’t agree with it.
Sanders plan would cost over 1.3 trillion dollars and would be paid primarily by a limit on tax deductions, strong income tax rates on the upper class, and income-based premiums. This would also mean you pay for healthcare directly through your paycheck now, so yes, your check would be smaller. But there would be no deductibles, no co-pays, and no unexpected costs. It would save the average American almost 10 thousand dollars annually. Healthcare would be an entirely new concept.
The bottom line is that Sanders’ plan ends up saving the American people money. This might not be ideal or what people originally expected, but throughout the course of modern healthcare history, the corruption behind pre-existing conditions and the political influence from the healthcare industry has put so many American lives at risk. And Tom Price’s firing may be the tipping point of healthcare innovation.
If we truly are a capitalist society that believes in the free market, we need to make sure that every American can participate in that free market. And that starts with not having to worry about whether you can afford to keep yourself and your loved ones alive. The rich won’t be paying for poorer Americans to gain healthcare; they will be paying an equitable amount to a Medicare for all system that has the potential to be used to treat any American no matter of their social or economic statuses. And if people like Bernie Sanders don’t take charge and do something soon, a new Tom Price will take reign and we will be doing these repeals all over again.
