During the online “Overtime” segment of Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) argued that a universal healthcare system will work nationwide despite not working in Vermont “Because the states didn’t have the waivers to get the money. You need the federal money.” And “If you have the waivers and you have the right policy on taxation, then you could do it. And it’ll save money.”
While discussing the platform of Democratic Socialists, host Bill Maher said, “Universal healthcare, no premiums, no co-pays, no deductibles. They tried this in Vermont. They couldn’t get it to work.”
Khanna responded, “You could do it nationally. It’s worked in Taiwan. … [I]t’s worked in Canada. We pay twice as much for healthcare as any other industrialized country and we’ve got the worst healthcare outcomes. If you had a single-payer — if you just expand Medicare…for everyone and everyone has to pay a little bit, you lower costs.”
Maher then asked, “So, why couldn’t it work in a state like Vermont? They’ve also proposed it here in California and the budget would have to be like…twice or three times what we pay for everything now.”
Khanna responded, “Because the states didn’t have the waivers to get the money. You need the federal money. You can’t — you need the Medicare/Medicaid money that the states didn’t have. And so, it’s hard to do it in a state without the waivers. If you have the waivers and you have the right policy on taxation, then you could do it. And it’ll save money.” Khanna also argued that Medicare works.
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