A lot of conservatives to not like the current bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, primarily because it keeps too many features of the Affordable Care Act and leaves off many reforms such as the ability to buy health insurance across state lines. While Sen Ted Cruz’s idea to have the vice president declare every reform germane for reconciliation and thus needing only 51 votes in the Senate may mollify Republicans, nothing short of socialized health care will satisfy Sen Bernie Sanders. According to Newsmax, Sanders declared that if the Republican bill is passed, then “thousands will die.”
Sanders’ conclusion, aside from the assumption that everything the Republicans do is likely to kill people, is based on the CBO study that concluded that millions of people would either lose or will drop their health insurance should the bill pass.
The assumption is that anyone without health insurance will not be able to get treatment for diseases and will therefore die.
Of course, Sanders is assuming that Obamacare must be saving thousands of lives because so much more people are covered, either by expanded Medicaid or individual insurance policies on the Obamacare exchanges. To be sure doctors tend to turn away Medicaid patients and the Obamacare exchange policies have such high deductibles that they are the equivalent of not having insurance in any case, albeit with the added feature of having to pay confiscatory premiums for the privilege.
Sanders has made no secret of his desire to inflict a government run, single-payer Health Care System in the United States.
Fortunately one does not have to venture to Great Britain with its death panels or Canada with its rationing and waiting periods to understand the horrors and carnage that system would visit upon patients. The United States already has such an arrangement in the form of the VA health care system. The health care that is “provided” to American veterans is so dysfunctional and sloppily managed that some have killed themselves in the parking lots of VA hospitals after being denied care by unfeeling bureaucrats.
Other atrocities include veterans writhing in pain on the floors of waiting room while being neglected by staff. Republicans, unfeeling monsters that they are, have nothing to teach Bernie Sanders where it comes to cruel public policy.