Just hours before the Democratic presidential debate last night, Bernie Sanders revealed details about a plan for a single-payer healthcare system on Sunday.
According to the Vermont senator’s “Medicare for All” plan, individuals would pay a 2.2 percent “premium” and employers would dole out a 6.2 percent payroll tax to fund the healthcare plan.
Individuals who make $250,000 to $500,000 would pay a tax rate of 37 percent and those making more than $10 million would pay a 52 percent tax rate.
Rival candidate Hillary Clinton criticized Sanders last week over his universal healthcare plan, arguing that he didn’t have a plan to pay for it. Read more.
{Andy Heller-Matzav.com}
In the referenced article Sanders is reported to have stated that health care is “right” for everyone. Bur Bernie, I ask, doesn’t everyone also have a right to have a roof over their heads? How about food? Isn’t everyone entitled to eat? What about clothing? Should anyone have to bear the embarrassment of ragged clothing? Go for it, Bernie! The government should nationalize all business and industry, which should belong to the people in the first place, and thereby it will provide all the inhabitants of the country with adequate health care, healthful diets served in communal dining areas, decent housing, utilitarian clothing and all other basic human needs. Anyone who exploits the people by pandering to their bourgeois aspirations should be incarcerated in a camp where their labor would be put to good use in service to the people. I think this system was put in place in some countries in Eastern Europe where it was a resounding success.
cyrano,
While the Torah would formulate it as a responsibility of the community rather than as an individual right, it is clear that Jewish tradition does make it a communal obligation to provide health care, food, clothing, and education. In many cases there were specific communal institutions set up to fulfill these obligations and participation was mandatory, not optional. And until the rise in popularity of the notorious anti-religious atheist hedonist Ayn Rand, even Jews who identified as the political “right” supported these — see Jabotinsky’s famous “five mems” for an example.
Sanders himself does not support government takeovers of anything other than health insurance. He may be an irreligious Jew most respects but he is not out of sync with this aspect of our tradition.