Healthcare

Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Madam President, if you have a leak in your sink or a dripping pipe in the bathroom, you generally fix it yourself or call a plumber to fix the problem. You don't look at your otherwise functioning house and decide to raze it to the ground because of the plumbing issue. But that is basically what Democrats want to do with our healthcare system.

Our healthcare system certainly isn't perfect, but our system also has plenty of positive things going for it: high- quality care, choice, access to innovative technology and treatments, and most Americans are pretty satisfied with their health insurance. So a logical thing to do would be to fix the problems with our system and to preserve what is working, but that is not what Democrats want to do.

Democrats want to destroy our current system and replace it with a single, one-size-fits-all, government-run program known as Medicare for All.

What will that mean for Americans? Paying more and waiting longer for worse care.

Medicare for All is estimated to cost $32 trillion or more over 10 years. That is more money than the Federal Government has spent in the last 8 years, combined, on everything. One Medicare expert estimates that doubling the amount of individual and corporate income tax collected would not be enough to cover the cost of Medicare for All. I don't know about the Democrats, but I don't know too many families who can afford to have their tax bills double.

Yet it is not just higher taxes. Medicare for All would eliminate Americans' healthcare choices.

Don't like the one-size-fits-all government healthcare plan? Too bad. You will not have any other option. Private and employer-sponsored healthcare will be a thing of the past. Your only choice will be the government's plan.

Your treatment choices will also be limited. If the government will not want to pay for a particular cancer treatment, for example, you will be out of luck. There will be no switching of an insurer to a better carrier. Unless you have tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars lying around to cover that treatment option entirely out-of- pocket, you are going to go without.

Then, of course, there are the long wait times that are a hallmark of socialized medicine. Patients in Canada and the United Kingdom, both of which have government-run healthcare systems, face tremendous wait times for care. It can take up to a year to get a medical procedure in Canada--one of the reasons you hear so many stories about Canadians coming to the United States for care. Imagine having to wait a year for your child to get a needed surgery. That is the kind of thing that parents can look forward to under Medicare for All.

As I said earlier, there are, undoubtedly, parts of our healthcare system that can be improved, and the Republicans are, in fact, currently working on legislation to increase access to affordable medication and to address the issue of surprise billing, but the solution is not to destroy our current system and force people to pay more for less choice and worse care.

The Democrats' ideology has outrun their common sense. The Republicans are committed to improving America's healthcare system and preserving Americans' healthcare choices. I hope the Democrats will abandon their plan for government-controlled healthcare and switch their focus to helping us.

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