Elections have consequences. Republicans’ failure to capture the U.S. Senate means that the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions — known as the HELP committee — will be chaired by Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.).
Sanders will replace Patty Murray (D., Wash.), who, by the standards of today’s Democratic Party, is relatively moderate in her views and temperament. “Moderate” is not in Sanders’s lexicon.
Lest we forget, Sanders is the senator who introduced the Medicare for All Act of 2017 that would have created a monopoly government health insurer to set all prices paid to health-care providers. Every American would be forced to participate with mandatory premiums set through tax policy. People who disliked the government’s plan would have no option to buy alternative insurance since the proposal banned private insurance for the comprehensive services covered by the program. Thankfully, that bill went nowhere.
But Sanders remains committed to a government takeover of the U.S. health-care sector that will limit Americans’ health-care choices. In May, he introduced the Medicare for All Act of 2022, which includes the identical prohibitions found in the earlier bill making it unlawful for a private insurer to sell health insurance or for a private employer to offer health insurance to its employees and their dependents.
