Democrats’ Steps Toward Socialized Medicine Would Cost Some Americans their Coverage, Others Lives

U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding Democrats’ reckless tax and spending spree:

“There’s little confusion about the devastating economic impacts Democrats would bring about by ramming through their reckless taxing and spending spree: more taxes, more debt, and more painful inflation.

“But this isn’t some collection of well-intentioned policies whose price tag has just gotten dangerously out of control.

“The policies, themselves, would mean real pain for American families.

“Case in point: the heavy-handed mandates that would restrict choice and access to affordable, lifesaving healthcare.

“Democrats want to axe the private insurance plans that millions of Americans have chosen and prefer. They want to build new federal health programs and expand the ones that exist today, heaping more than $550 billion in new expenses on taxpayers to insure less than 4 million more people.

“Here’s the truth: the overwhelming majority of Americans today have access to healthcare. Democrats just don’t like the private plans that most Americans choose.

“Then, there’s the plan to heap hundreds of billions of dollars in new programs and huge pools of additional people into a Medicare system that experts say is already dangerously close to insolvency. A huge, risky leap toward Medicare-for-All, at the expense of the stability and the security of the actual Medicare system that millions of seniors rely on right now.

“Democrats want to pour cold water on America’s world-leading medical innovation sector by imposing socialist price caps on prescription medicines. In another example of Democrats’ magic math, the rationale here is apparently that calling something cheaper makes it so!

“In reality, research tells us this would mean fewer new treatments and cures. By one analysis, these price controls could cause up to 20 times as much lost life over a decade as the once-in-a-century COVID pandemic already has. Suppressing innovation through drug socialism would literally cost American lives.

“And of course, they’re planning to leave behind commonsense protections against taxpayer-funded abortion that had enjoyed consistent bipartisan support for decades.

“Madam President, this isn’t just a runaway price tag. The policies themselves are terrible, destructive things that would make American families’ lives worse. And the end goal, as one liberal House member said just yesterday, is a Medicare-for-All system from before you’re born until you die.

“More government between families and affordable care.

“More government between sick patients and lifesaving cures.

“More reckless ideas from Washington Democrats.”