Democratic presidential hopeful and former Obama aide Julian Castro doubled-down on his party’s demands for a ‘Medicare for All’ program in the United States; saying the country “needs” to completely overhaul the entire healthcare system.
Castro was speaking with MSNBC when he was asked what his first priority would be should he be elected President of the United States.
“You become president, you’re sworn in, you have a Democratic House and Senate—the first bill, the first big domestic policy legislation you move is?” asked host Chris Hayes.
“Health care,” Castro replied. “I believe that we need Medicare for All.”
FACT CHECK: NY Times RIPS Cortez’ Claim Pentagon Could Pay $32T 'Medicare for All'
Even the mainstream media piled on incoming Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ recent comments that Pentagon spending errors could largely fund a ‘Medicare for All’ healthcare system; with the New York Times calling the claim ‘misleading.’
“Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the rising liberal star, cited a figure that refers to nearly two decades of internal financial adjustments, not actual spending,” writes the Times.
“For starters, the combined Pentagon budget from 1998 to 2015 was $9.2 trillion. One study by a libertarian economic think tank found that ‘Medicare for all’ legislation by Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, would cost the federal government $32.6 trillion over 10 years,” adds the author.
$21 TRILLION of Pentagon financial transactions “could not be traced, documented, or explained.”
$21T in Pentagon accounting errors. Medicare for All costs ~$32T.
That means 66% of Medicare for All could have been funded already by the Pentagon.
And that’s before our premiums. https://t.co/soT6GSmDSG
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) December 2, 2018
The point, I think, was more about how we care so little about the ‘how do you pay for it’ when we are talking about war and military spending,” said a spokesperson for Ocasio-Cortez.
Read the full story here.
FLASHBACK: Bernie Says Medicare-for-All Would 'Bankrupt the Nation'
Socialist Senator Bernier Sanders –who just this week unveiled a universal healthcare bill- admitted back in 1987 that a single-payer plan would carry an “astronomical” cost and would likely “bankrupt the nation.”
Sanders was speaking with a local Vermont television station when he made the surprising admission, saying that adopting a Canadian healthcare model in the United States would be far too expensive.
“You want to guarantee that all people have access to health care as you do in Canada,” said Sanders.
“But I think what we understand is that unless we change the funding system and the control mechanism in this country to do that—for example, if we expanded Medicaid to everybody,” he added, “Give everybody a Medicaid card—we would be spending such an astronomical sum of money that, you know, we would bankrupt the nation.”
30 years later, Bernie Sanders is pushing exactly the type of healthcare system he critiqued back in 1987; unveiling new legislation this week that he described as “Medicare-for-all.”
Bernie’s proposal is expected to cost an “astronomical” $32 trillion over a ten-year period; a figure that would likely “bankrupt the nation.”
Watch Sanders’ admission above.