Seema Verma, Administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, on March 27 published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal decrying the concept of “Medicare for All,” under the headline, “Medicare for All Means Hope for None.” It was the first formal, public statement from a senior healthcare official in the Trump administration addressing in detail the concept of “Medicare for All,” which has gained currency among some national Democratic Party leaders (including some 2020 presidential candidates), and among some progressive activists. President Donald Trump has loudly criticized the concept, but has not argued any details about it.
“Medicare, as President Lyndon B. Johnson put it, is a ‘light of hope’ for elderly Americans. Medicare for All proposals threaten to extinguish it,” Verma wrote in the WSJ. Medicare for All would break a sacred promise and harm seniors’ access to care by forcing a system designed to support them to take on every other American. They deserve a system that helps them get well, not get in line.”
Meanwhile, Verma wrote, “As for your taxes, the question isn’t whether Medicare for All would raise them, but by how many tens of trillions. The Mercatus Center at George Mason University and Emory University’s Kenneth Thorpe calculate 10-year price tags of $32.6 trillion and $24.7 trillion, respectively. The monetary cost of Medicare for All is surpassed by its moral cost,” she added. “The plan would strip coverage from more than 180 million Americans and force them into government insurance. It will resemble the Veterans Administration, which has been plagued by unreasonable wait times, poor customer service, provider shortages and little accountability in the administration of care.”
Later in the op-ed, Verma wrote that “Proponents of government health care advocate single payer not because their last experiment—ObamaCare—worked, but because it failed. Instead of doubling down on government control and spending—which left policyholders with higher premiums and deductibles and less choice—we should reduce unnecessary rules and bureaucracies. By empowering patients and getting out of the way, the government can unleash the private insurance market, stoking competition and giving consumers more choices. Then we can instead go after the real drivers of high health-care costs rather than killing the source of medical innovation with government overreach.”
