Conservatives often use word games to trick voters into voting against their own interests. Take Medicare for All. Opponents point to the amount of money required to run the program and scream that it “costs” too much.
They diligently avoid comparing that “cost” to the cost of the insane system we have now.
Call our current system option A, and Medicare for All option B. If option A “costs” $10 trillion, and option B costs $7 trillion, in what bizarre universe could you say option B “costs too much”? How can a system that saves money “cost too much”?
A simpler example. Imagine you belong to a health club that charges you $100 a month. A new club comes to town that charges $75 a month. Yes, the new club “costs” $75 a month, but it also “saves” you $25 a month.
Vermont was subjected to this semantic game back in 2014 when then-Gov. Shumlin pulled the plug on our single-payer plan (Green Mountain Care). Although Shumlin announced that the “risk of economic shock is too high,” he also said, in the same report, that Green Mountain Care “would yield savings of $378 million over the first five years of the program.”
It “cost” too much to save $75 million a year?
Don’t fall for the bogus “cost” claim.
Lee Russ