Michael Walsh: Medicare for All ‘Is Breaking the Bargain with Senior Citizens’

In the US, dreams of a 'Big Bang' for health insurance
AFP

Medicare “will be destroyed” if Democrats’ “Medicare for All” proposals are implemented, “breaking the bargain with senior citizens,” said author and screenwriter Michael Walsh in a Wednesday interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow.

Walsh, a founding editor of Breitbart News’s Big Journalism vertical, said, “I’m on Medicare, so I understand something about Medicare. I’m over 65. First of all, [Medicare for All] is a non-starter among the baby boomers, of which I’m smack in the middle of that generation. Medicare was a program — like Social Security — designed for people who live long enough to collect it.”

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Walsh continued, “Everybody pays the taxes into it — whether the system is honestly financed or not is irrelevant to this particular discussion — but the bargain with people when Medicare and Social Security were started was: You pay your taxes; you will get this, regardless of anything else, [such as] your income [or] any personal characteristics; if you’re alive, if you’re breathing, you get the money.”

Walsh went on, “So these dishonest Democrats — who really do want single-payer health care, that is socialized medicine — have seized on the word ‘Medicare,’ which has a very good reputation. … It’s an extremely effective program. [Medicare] is very responsive to your calls. It’s stunning that it’s a government program that works as well as it does.”

“It will be destroyed by turning it into a giant welfare program for the entire country from cradle to grave,” warned Walsh. “It will be atomized. This is breaking the bargain with senior citizens, and I don’t think they’re going to like it very much at the ballot box.”

Marlow invited Walsh’s analysis of Democrat promises for “reparations.”

“The Democrats have seized upon an idea that they think is going to appeal to African-Americans, and I think it’s going to fail on them in a spectacular way, because the Democrats have done their best to teach black people that they’ve been marginalized and disrespected and have lived a horrendous life in the United States,” assessed Walsh. “But if you read the history of black culture, especially the Harlem Renaissance — a project I’ve been involved with for many, many years — starting around the turn of the last century, black culture created some amazing things against very difficult odds, clearly, the worst odds that anybody who’s come to America has faced.

Black culture has “achieved great writers, great thinkers, [and] great artists,” continued Walsh, “and it’s being trashed by the left, which doesn’t like to see black people do well. It would rather keep them on the plantation and in servitude, figuratively if not literally, and I think it’s a disgrace — it’s a moral disgrace — and I think a lot of African-Americans understand they’re being patronized by this nonsense.”

CNN and Democrats ignoring the Robert Mueller-led operation during Tuesday’s ostensible “presidential debate” illustrated left-wing mendacity, determined Walsh.

“The left is so dishonest — so fundamentally mendacious — that they will take any stick with which the beat the country into submission,” Walsh remarked. “They hate the country. They hate it the way it was founded. They hide behind this bogus patriotism, when what they mean is, ‘We;re patriotic about the country we’re going to turn it into.’ No American should fall for this.”

Breitbart News Daily broadcasts live on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.

Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter.

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