Many progressive congressional candidates, including Malibu’s representative, Ted Lieu, are promoting Medicare for all Americans who want it, regardless of age. Conservatives oppose Medicare for all, despite its popularity, as too expensive. The libertarian Mercatus Center has estimated expanding the federal government’s Medicare program would cost $32.6 trillion over 10 years, or about $2 trillion less than Americans are currently projected to pay. The federal government would pay more, but Americans as a whole would pay less. The focus on cost ignores the life expectancy benefits of mandating that all citizens have access to at least a bronze-level of quality medical care. Despite paying the most worldwide per capita for medical care, Americans live three years less on average (avg. = 79.3 years) than citizens of France (avg. = 82.4 years) or Spain (avg = 82.8 years) and four years less on average than citizens of Japan (avg. = 83.7 years). The life expectancy difference between the U.S. and these countries is attributable partly to French, Spanish and Japanese babies having universal access to quality health care and needed immunizations, whereas 20 million U.S. children have inadequate access to essential medical care. The life expectancy difference is also partly attributable to four-12 percent of low-income women in the U.S. receiving late or no prenatal care, depending on their ethnic/racial background, in contrast to universal access to prenatal care in the comparison countries. Consequently, the U.S. maternal death rate (26.4 deaths per 100,000) is three to six times higher than the rates in the UK (9.2 percent), France (7.8 percent), Spain (5.6 percent) and Sweden (4.4 percent). Americans pay a high cost for their “freedom” to not participate in a government-funded health insurance program. The cost is not just the higher total health care costs per capita to cover preventable medical care costs, but also the lower proportion of healthy recruits available to employers and the military and fewer years that Americans have to enjoy watching their grandchildren grow up. The time has passed for the U.S. to join its Western European allies in mandating universal access to at least a bronze-level of quality health care for all of its citizens, especially for its babies.
William McCarthy