There is a lot of talk among Democrats for Medicare for All, which on the surface looks like a winner……………until……………..They find out how much it would raise their taxes.
There is no way you can delude yourself that you can raise 32.4 billion in the next ten years by taxing only the rich. Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle says that if Democrats insist on running on that issue, they will end up handing Trump a second term. Consider this.
Union employees get great benefits and the union makes a fortune on the health insurance they force companies to buy from them. This will not make them happy.
McArdle cites polling that shows “Medicare for All” is popular on its surface, but that it also takes a drastic hit among likely voters who oppose the program if it means higher taxes and an end to private insurers.
“There’s a certain freedom in having Trump as an opponent — he’s so loathed in many quarters of the electorate that you can propose almost anything and still be pretty certain of those votes. And yet, not entirely certain,” McArdle wrote. “If you force suburbanites to choose between having a lewd race-baiter in the White House and sacrificing their health-insurance coverage… or paying higher taxes… or many of the other disruptive things progressives want to do… well, maybe they decide the troglodyte is the lesser of two evils.”
“Democratic politicians such as Harris seem to be screwing up their courage to take the plunge. The question is which way Democratic primary voters will bet: on some boring centrist who will never even try to deliver the radical change so many of them crave, or on the fire-breathing progressive who might accidentally deliver them another four years of Donald Trump,” she concluded.