Socialized medicine? For a third of Americans, it’s the status quo

Last week, Democrats tried to call Republicans’ bluff, offering a health care amendment that would eliminate Medicare.

That’s the government-run insurance plan used by roughly 44 million elderly Americans. The GOP, not surprisingly, didn’t go for it.

Medicare is a widely popular program. For millions of America’s seniors, it’s a matter of life and death.

The game of political cat-and-mouse illustrates a point that’s been lost in the current debate: America already has a massive government-run medical system, serving more than a third of our population.

Here’s my back-of-the-napkin tally:

As noted, 44 million seniors are on Medicare. Another 47 million low-income and disabled Americans receive their health coverage through Medicaid.

Another 5.5 million Veterans receive their coverage through the taxpayer-funded VA program. Add to that another roughly 1.4 million who are active duty service-members or work for the Department of Defense.

The total so far? 99 million Americans receiving their healthcare through taxpayer programs.

But we’re not done. There are also 1.7 million Federal employees; another 615,000 Post Office workers; 2.4 million state government workers nationwide; and a whopping 5.6 million local government employees.

All those government workers receive health insurance paid for by taxpayers.

Updated total: 109 million Americans on “socialized medicine.”

Still not done, though. Those totals don’t include the roughly 4 million Americans who work in public education.

Teachers, too, have health insurance paid for by taxpayers.

I’ve probably missed a few million people who draw their insurance directly from public funding. There are also likely tens of millions of dependent spouses and children not captured in this tally.

But you get the point.

At least 110-150 million Americans already rely on public funding of some kind for their health coverage — and they have done for decades.

It’s fair, of course, to debate whether some kind of similar option should be available for the 40+ million Americans who don’t have any coverage at all.

But to suggest that publicly-funded insurance is unAmerican or dangerous or weird is, well, silly.

One footnote. Lawmakers complain about the cost of expanding health coverage.

But last week they insisted on packing the Defense bill with more than $3 billion in spending that the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and President Obama say they don’t want.

That amount alone would provide basic coverage to a million uninsured Americans…

Tags: health