Does Bernie Honestly Think Americans Would Be 'Delighted' To Pay More Taxes?
Democratic presidential contender and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is trying really hard to put his finger on the pulse of everyday Americans. But it’s not going so well.
Rather than moving toward the political middle in an effort to broaden appeal, the tactic of the leftist Democratic candidates is to sprint as far left as they can.
During an interview with CNN Wednesday night, Sanders showed just how far left he can sprint … or meander in Sanders’ case.
Sanders told Anderson Cooper he thinks Americans would be happy to pay more taxes.
“I suspect that a lot of people in this country would be delighted to pay more in taxes if they had comprehensive health care as a human right,” Sanders told Cooper.
Bernie Sanders on paying for socialism: “People in this country would be delighted to pay more in taxes.” pic.twitter.com/A3FMpdGJ0U
— Arthur Schwartz (@ArthurSchwartz) June 13, 2019
“I live 50 miles away from the Canadian border,” Sanders continued, according to The Daily Wire. In Canada, “you go to the doctor any time you want. You don’t take out your wallet. You have heart surgery, you have a heart transplant and you come out of the hospital and it costs you nothing.”
Sanders is wrong. About everything he just said. Literally everything.
First, you absolutely take out your wallet. Almost all Canadians pay more in taxes than Americans. This is especially true for the middle class of both countries where our friends to the north pay higher income taxes, higher sales taxes and have a higher cost of goods.
Just because you don’t pay at the doctor’s office, doesn’t mean you don’t pay. Classic socialistic bait-and-switch.
Second, you absolutely cannot go to the doctor any time you want in Canada. Not even close.
According to a 2018 study by the Fraser Institute, wait times for health care in Canada are horrendous.
Specialist physicians surveyed report a 2018 median waiting time of 19.8 weeks between referral from a general practitioner and receipt of treatment.
That’s a little better than the previous year’s wait time of 20.3 weeks, reported in a 2017 study by the Fraser Institute. But it’s still more than twice as long as it was in 1993.
(The 2017 wait time — “the longest ever recorded in this survey’s history” — was “128% longer than in 1993, when it was just 9.3 weeks,” according to that year’s report.)
Across Canada last year, “the total number of procedures for which people are waiting in 2018 is 1,082,541,” the 2018 report stated.
The report concluded that, “despite provincial strategies to reduce wait times and high levels of health expenditure, it is clear that patients in Canada continue to wait too long to receive medically necessary treatment.”
Now I don’t know if Sanders is lying, ignorant or confused — maybe it’s a mix of all three.
But in any event, the socialist senator is dead wrong about the benefits of the Canadian health care system.
And it would deadly for Americans to believe anything else.
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