Bernie Sanders says Trump-GOP healthcare plan is 'absurd' and would make things 'even worse'
WASHINGTON, DC: President Donald Trump and his Republican allies finally started floating ideas to fix America’s "broken" healthcare system, but Sen Bernie Sanders is having none of it.
The Vermont firebrand lashed out this week against the GOP’s healthcare brainstorm. In a Thursday op-ed for the Boston Globe, Sanders blasted the whole package as “absurd” proposals that “would take our already broken healthcare system and make it even worse.”
Bernie Sanders rips Donald Trump’s $6,500 paycheck plan
Sanders slammed Trump’s apparent idea to cut Americans a sizeable check and choose their own healthcare. He called the lump-sum fantasy an “absolute disaster."
“At a time when more than 60 percent of our people live paycheck to paycheck, a $6,500 check is meaningless in the face of real medical costs,” Sanders wrote.
“How is someone who needs a $150,000 cancer treatment going to get the care they need with a $6,500 check? What is a pregnant woman supposed to do with a $6,500 check when the average cost of childbirth in America is over $20,000? How is someone who has a heart attack going to be able to afford a $50,000 hospital stay with just $6,500?” Sanders asked.
The Vermont senator believes the plan wouldn’t just fail, it would torch people’s finances and push even more Americans into medical bankruptcy. According to him, that doesn’t happen in countries with universal healthcare.
“Trump’s approach would lead to more medical bankruptcies, more unaffordable care, and more Americans dying unnecessarily in the richest nation on Earth,” he warned.
Bernie Sanders still dreams about 'medicare for all' someday
Sanders reminded everyone that he still sees Medicare for All as the golden ticket out of this mess, but he knows Congress isn’t lining up behind his lifelong dream right now.
Considering the situation, Sanders pitched some interim moves to keep the system from collapsing. The senator wants to extend the enhanced tax credits from the 2021 American Rescue Plan, roll back the roughly $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts Republicans slid into the One Big Beautiful Bill Act earlier this year, and beef up Medicare to cover dental, vision, and hearing.
He also tossed a challenge at President Trump to back a ban on stock buybacks and dividends for health insurance companies, which he says is cash that should be going to patient care and not shareholder pockets.
“The American people know that our healthcare system is broken,” Sanders declared in the Globe piece, adding that “Democrats must be strong in rallying the American people around a rational healthcare system that works for all, not just insurance and drug companies.”
The senator dropped a second op-ed the same day for Fox News, where he tagged the GOP for hacking away at Medicaid just so tech moguls like Elon Musk could keep stacking cash and “build millions of robots that will, by the way, decimate good-paying jobs throughout our country.”
Earlier this week, Sanders fired off a letter to Democrats in Congress urging them to get behind the proposals laid out in his new opinion pieces.
