Betsy McCaughey: With Medicare for All, ‘Doctors Will Avoid Seniors like the Plague’

New York Post columnist and former Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey (R-NY) warned Wednesday on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight that Democrats’ Medicare for All proposals, if implemented, would cause doctors to “avoid seniors like the plague.”

McCaughey said, “We really need to explore what is inside the bill in the House and also the equivalent Bernie Sanders bill in the Senate because Americans will be shocked to hear what’s going proposed.”

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McCaughey added, “Medicare for All, this bait and switch — they’ve chosen a program that’s very popular and for good reason — and they’re promising that everyone will have it, but, in fact, that’s not at all what the bill says. The Sanders bill and the companion bill in the House actually eliminate Medicare along with Medicaid, with all commercial health insurance, the kinds of insurance people buy in the individual market … and they also outlaw employer-provided health insurance. It will be illegal for employers to cover their workers, their workers’ families, [and] even retirees who worked their whole lives and were promised this coverage upon retiring. That will all be illegal.”

“There will only be one system: health coverage provided directly by Uncle Sam,” stated McCaughey. “The federal government — that now pays for slightly under half of all health care in the United States — will suddenly be paying everybody’s health care, and you will have no choice, no escape, no alternative.”

“Democrats would rather walk on hot coals than explain to the public what [Medicare for All] costs,” added McCaughey. “The Urban Institute-Brookings evaluation of the bill said it would cost $32 trillion — trillion with a ‘T’ — every ten years. The Mercatus Institute at George Mason University agreed. There is very little disagreement about what this bill would cost.”

Application of Medicare for All will compel reductions in care for seniors, McCaughey warned.

McCaughey explained, “If everybody’s on this system called Medicare-for-All — and that’s what the Sanders bill says, that all doctors and hospitals will be paid at this Medicare rate — there isn’t going to be enough money in the system because they’re only paying 87 cents for every dollar of care. So hospitals are going to have to jam more beds into every room, nurses are going to be spread thinner, and doctors are going to have to see more patients per hour to keep the lights on and pay their staff. To do that, you know who’s going to go to the back of the line? The patients who require the most care: seniors.”

“Because seniors need more care and more time with the doctor, doctors will avoid them like the plague,” concluded McCaughey.

McCaughey continued, “There are sections of this bill that outlaw private health insurance. It prohibits insurers from offering coverage for any type of care that the government system covers. Secondly, other provisions in this bill make it illegal for employers to promise health coverage to their workers, families, or retirees. This isn’t speculation. Read the bill.”

Healthcare quality must be lowered as the government increasingly centralizes control of health care, said McCaughey, adding that medical innovation will also be stultified.

“Here’s what’s happening to single-payer countries,” began McCaughey. “In order to make ends meet, they curb the adoption and use of new technology, and you can see that that’s what’s behind the single-payer proposals [in America] because Victor Fuchs, for example, of Stanford, or Austin Frakt, who writes in the New York Times, they are constantly arguing that to save money, Americans must slow the development and use of medical innovation, new technologies, new types of diagnostic equipment. They say it just costs too much.

“We don’t want to go to low-tech medicine in this country,” declared McCaughey, noting that Democrats prioritize the “propping up of Obamacare” over the welfare of Americans.

Breitbart News Tonight broadcasts live on SiriusXM Patriot channel 125 weeknights from 9:00 p.m. to midnight Eastern or 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Pacific.

Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter @rkraychik.