Government-controlled health care affects lives broadly, and at times, tragically. Situations abroad demonstrate what “Medicare for All” really looks like: waiting in lines for necessary medical care, and even being denied life-saving care. While logically distinct from the more mundane issue of health care financing, a cultural and legal acceptance of the right of the state to govern life and death decisions should be a warning to Americans of all political persuasions.
In the U.S., Medicaid, the government health care program for the poor, is characterized by low reimbursement for doctors and other medical professionals, making it particularly hard for Medicaid patients to secure high-quality care from medical specialists.
Medicare for All does not merely fail to improve lives, it ends lives. Under the proposed single-payer system, abortion would be considered health care. As Louis Brown explains in Chapter 26, Medicare for All would affect every aspect of the pro-life movement: the current prohibition of federal funding for abortion, crisis pregnancy centers, the normalization of abortion as health care, and religious freedom. Medicare for All is clearly a battle over abortion as well; if pro-life Americans want to protect the unborn and protect religious freedom, they must reject a single-payer system.
Section 7 examines four aspects our lives that centralized power under “Medicare for All” would affect: life expectancy, family control over medical decisions for loved ones, mandated abortion funding, and the freedom to make decisions about our own wellbeing. Americans should be wary of government overreach; though the promises of “Medicare for All” are attractive, a closer look at the evidence reveals that in practice it is a threat to both innocent human life and the American way of life.
