Reacting to the Democratic primary debate on Thursday, Sen. John Cornyn blasted the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, and the more progressive policy of Medicare-for-All.
“O-care didn’t deliver on promises and [the] real goal is socialized medicine,” Cornyn wrote. “Meanwhile, Medicare-for-All means 180M Americans can’t keep their employer-provided coverage. If you paid into Medicare all your work life, you will wait in line with everyone else for worse care.”
Obamacare promised a lot and delivered on a lot, including forcing insurance companies to cover tens of millions of Americans with pre-existing medical conditions. It provided a million Texans with insurance and allowed kids to stay on their parents’ plan until age 26. The overall cost of care and prescription drugs does remain problematic, which is what the 2020 Democrats running for President are all focusing on.
President Trump and Sen. Cornyn aren’t all that focused on health care reform beyond killing Obamacare. And Cornyn has ties to the big pharmaceutical industry.
As for the senator’s claims about Medicare-for-All, Sen. Elizabeth Warren tackles the foundational problem with the U.S. health care system: profits.
“I’ve actually never met anybody who likes their health insurance company,” Warren said during Thursday’s debate. “I’ve met people who like their doctors. I’ve met people who like their nurses … Instead of paying premiums into insurance companies and then having insurance companies build their profits by saying no to coverage, we’re going to do this by saying, everyone is covered by Medicare-or-All, every health care provider is covered.”
As for whether the policy will lead to worse care, countries with some form of universal healthcare coverage have smaller mortality rates and more access to quality healthcare than the U.S., according to data reviewed by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
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