Bernie Sanders: Medicare-for-all would not resemble Britain's NHS

[Celerity]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/12/30/bernie-sanders-medicare-nhs-reparations/

https://archive.ph/FQBoE



The Dec. 26 editorial “Socialized medicine can’t survive the winter” criticized the United Kingdom’s National Health Service and falsely suggested that Britain’s system resembles Medicare-for-all, legislation that I have introduced in the Senate and which has 17 co-sponsors. That comparison is inaccurate and obscures a more important truth: Many of the problems The Post attributed to the NHS are far more prevalent in the United States.

The Post describes the U.K. system as costly but conveniently ignored the fact that the United States spends far more on health care per capita than any major country on Earth — $14,885 per person each year — more than double what the United Kingdom, Canada and France spend.

The result: More than 27 million Americans are uninsured. About 1 in 4 have difficulty affording prescription drugs. And an estimated 500,000 people go bankrupt each year because of medical debt. The Post also called the NHS inefficient. In reality, it’s the American health care system that is bureaucratic and wasteful.

Medicare-for-all is not a government-run, British-style National Health Service system. It is a government-funded universal insurance program. Medicare-for-all would simply expand Medicare — a program that has worked extremely well for more than six decades — to cover every American, eliminate premiums and out-of-pocket costs, give people the freedom to choose their doctors, and ensure no one is denied care. Every other major nation has figured out how to provide universal health care at far lower cost. The question is whether the United States will finally do the same.

Bernie Sanders, Washington

[Buckeyeblue]

1. I'm surprised the big corporations are not in favor of this approach

Employers could stop having to provide Healthcare as a benefit. They would save billions of dollars. People who run small businesses could find affordable insurance--it would open opportunities to people who would like to start a business but can't due to the high costs of insurance.

And we could probably eliminate medicaid. We wouldn't need it if everyone qualified for Medicare. There is simply not a good reason not to do this.

[JBTaurus83]

2. I've thought about this as well

Perhaps some in our “ruling class” prefer to have health insurance to hold over the heads of workers. There have been many times that I’ve thought about leaving a job, and I don’t because of the insurance.

[Buckeyeblue]

3. Could be

Also, I know some of the bigger corporations actually self insure, meaning they collect the premiums from workers and pay claims. The use an actual insure carrier to negotiate prices and administer the plan. But at the end of the day, the company is probably profiting since most of the employees are not high risk.

I don't know if this is still the case but I remember reading about it during the time that ACA was being debated. Medicare expansion was definitely one of the options but I don't think we had the votes for it.

[yardwork]

5. I think that's it.

Also, the big corporations receive government subsidies (in the form of tax breaks and other sleight of hand) for their health care plans.

The U.S. health care system does two things:

1. Helps ensure that workers must remain employed by large corporations in order to access health care and

2. Provides government subsidies to keep an entire class of corporation (private insurers) in business, with huge salaries for executives and profits to shareholders.

Obamacare helped ease the first point above, but in order to get it approved in Congress had to capitulate even more on point number two.

Bernie Sanders is correct that this WaPo editorial is bullshit. The British NHS is a different system than ours. Providing Medicare to all wouldn't replicate their system. (Also, the British economy is in shambles for one very good reason: BREXIT.)

[EdmondDantes_]

4. But it incentivizes people to work for a big company.

Smaller companies will often have worse benefits, higher premiums, or not offer insurance at all. Plus employees might be less likely to leave.

[Cosmocat]

6. I am not surprised, having thought and said this for half a century now

How on earth does the party that screams about the free market and keeping business free of governmental entanglements cling so desperately to a health care "system" that forces employers to provide health care?

But, I know why ... the libs are the spawn of the devil thinking is so strong and pervasive, on so many ways people and businesses will work against their best interests relentlessly because LIBERALS!

[Buckeyeblue]

7. It does seem like that sometimes

I also think that Republicans prefer to keep poor people poor. And they especially like poor people who vote for them.