Last week, Democrats tried to call Republicans’ bluff, offering a health care amendment that would eliminate Medicare.<\/p>\n
That’s the government-run insurance plan used by roughly 44 million elderly Americans. The GOP, not surprisingly, didn’t go for it.<\/p>\n
Medicare is a widely popular program. For millions of America’s seniors, it’s a matter of life and death.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Here’s my back-of-the-napkin tally:<\/p>\n
As noted, 44 million seniors are on Medicare. Another 47 million low-income and disabled Americans receive their health coverage through Medicaid.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The total so far? 99 million Americans receiving their healthcare through taxpayer programs.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
All those government workers receive health insurance paid for by taxpayers.<\/p>\n
Updated total: 109 million Americans on “socialized medicine.”<\/p>\n
Still not done, though. Those totals don’t include the roughly 4 million Americans who work in public education.<\/p>\n
Teachers, too, have health insurance paid for by taxpayers.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
But you get the point.<\/p>\n
At least 110-150 million Americans already rely on public funding of some kind for their health coverage — and they have done for decades.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
But to suggest that publicly-funded insurance is unAmerican or dangerous or weird is, well, silly.<\/p>\n
One footnote. Lawmakers complain about the cost of expanding health coverage. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
That amount alone would provide basic coverage to a million uninsured Americans…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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