In Michigan, Abdul el Sayed, who “literally wrote the book on Medicare for All,” is “running to guarantee healthcare for every single American.”

“Expanding Medicare and providing it to every single American would make it stronger,” he says.

Likewise, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who introduced the Medicare for All Act in the U.S. Senate in 2025, said in a press release this week that Medicare for All would “reduce overall healthcare spending in America by more than $1 trillion a year.”

The DSA, Sanders, and all the special interest groups behind the Medicare for All movement know that “Medicare” is “is both popular and successful.”

“Overall, people with Medicare are more satisfied with their health insurance coverage than adults with other types of insurance,” the Kaiser Family Foundation noted in a 2023 report.

Thus, they have craftily inserted the term “Medicare” before “for All” to disarm Americans who may be skeptical of universal “free” healthcare.

But Medicare does not provide universal coverage of all health care needs for “free.” Not even close.

In reality, “Medicare covers things like inpatient hospital care, doctors’ services and tests, and preventive services,” per its website.

It also clearly states on its government webpage that it does not cover “eye exams,” “long-term care,” “cosmetic surgery,” “massage therapy,” “routine physical exams,” “hearing aids and exams for fitting them,” “Concierge care (also called concierge medicine, retainer-based medicine, boutique medicine, platinum practice, or direct care),” and “most dental care.”

Most Medicare recipients are more than 65 years old and have dutifully paid into the Medicare Trust Fund for many decades, from which they are now taking benefits. Medicare is not free.

Furthermore, in 2025, 87% of Medicare recipients purchased “supplemental coverage” like Medigap and Medicare Advantage to cover prescription drugs and several services not covered by Original Medicare.

Linking the term Medicare to universal “free” healthcare is just a clever political ploy.

More importantly than word games, it is an unequivocal fact that Medicare is running out of money.

The Medicare Trust Fund faces “serious fiscal challenges” because “Medicare spending is projected to continue increasing faster than Medicare payroll taxes and faster than the overall economy, resulting in projected insolvency of the HI trust fund in the next seven years.”

Yikes, that means Medicare has a very grim fiscal future over the long-term shy of cutting benefits and hiking payroll taxes.

When DSA members mention the words “expansion” and “Medicare” in the same sentence, they should be forced to acknowledge that Medicare is already running out of money.

But most of all, DSA members must be pressed to answer the $44 trillion question.

According to the Paragon Health Institute, which I personally trust more than Bernie’s back-of-the-envelope number, Medicare for All, also known as universal health care, “would increase federal spending by roughly $44 trillion over its first decade.”

It generally adheres to logic that when the government gives away “free” stuff, in this case, magically “free” healthcare, demand for said “free” stuff will increase substantially.

But what will not increase in correlation to new demand, sans a robot revolution and the mass deployment of AI doctors and nurses, is the supply of healthcare providers. As such, this will create shortages and rationing of care because nothing is “free,” ever.

As with most of the dumb policies under the DSA’s program, government-controlled, single-payer systems, which are the DSA model, have more than failed to live up to their lofty expectations.

The Soviet Union had a vibrant universal “free” healthcare system, or so we were told. Apparently, Cuba has cracked the code and can offer unlimited healthcare to its residents, if you believe Medicare for All guru Michael Moore.

As of today, our neighbor to the north has offered “free” healthcare since 1984, ironically.

But the Canada Health System is a financial basket case. As is the case with England’s National Health Service.

In Canada and the United Kingdom, prompt, effective, state-of-the-art health care is the exception.

’TAX THE RICH’ IS A SCAM. YOU’RE THE ONE GETTING THE BILL

The norm is byzantine bureaucracy, long wait times, substandard service, cost-effective care, rationing, and an utter lack of innovation because the total absence of competition tends to retard ingenuity.

Gee, that sounds a lot like Medicaid.

Chris Talgo ([email protected]) is editorial director at The Heartland Institute.