Want Medicare for All? Be Ready to Wait
Trump is right to question claims by Sanders and Warren that eliminating insurers won’t add to either costs or delays in appointments.
Hurry up and wait.
Photographer: Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images
“Medicare for All” continues to be a top issue in the Democratic presidential campaign, and President Donald Trump isn’t waiting to see who wins to start attacking it. So far, the Democratic debate has centered on how a huge expansion of Medicare would affect private health insurance and middle-class taxes. But Trump is raising another big issue: wait times. “Medicare-for-All would force patients to face massive wait times for treatments and destroy access to quality care,” declares the White House website.
Like everything else in the health-care debate, this is a disputed point. Thomas Waldrop, a health-care analyst with the Center for American Progress, a liberal group, has responded to Trump: “Wait time concerns amount to little more than fearmongering by those who oppose expansion of coverage.”