Let’s oust GOP in midterms

By Cesar F. Lumba, Las Vegas

Saturday, May 20, 2017 | 2 a.m.

Amid the hullabaloo and Republican rigmarole on health insurance reform, where reform means to Republican legislators an opportunity to give huge tax cuts to the rich, there is that ever-present elephant in the room: Medicare for all.

For more than a decade now, the public has been in favor of a government that assures every American has health insurance. A May 2016 Gallup survey puts the number of Americans favoring health care for all at 58 percent. Pew Research has been tracking this issue since 2000 and has found that support for government assurance that everyone has health insurance has gone from 64 percent in 2000 to the current 60 percent.

The Democrats have a huge opportunity to retake the House and possibly the Senate in the 2018 midterms. Every Democrat running for the House and the Senate must hammer away on the need for Medicare for all. Contrast the Democratic vision of Medicare for all with the Republican vision of huge tax cuts for the millionaires and billionaires.

Keep reminding Americans that nearly all industrialized countries have a version of Medicare for all and that Republican candidates who oppose Medicare for all must be swept into the dustbin of history.

How to pay for Medicare for all? Make companies that provide health insurance to their employees pay into the Medicare system instead. Allow those whose employers do not provide health insurance to buy into the Medicare system. Put everyone who is at, near or below poverty level in Medicare and let the states share in the additional cost.

And most important: Tax the rich more.

Give the rich the opportunity to live up to President John F. Kennedy’s challenge: Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.

We of the middle class and the poor are already living up to that challenge. We haven’t had salary and wage increases in real money terms since the 1970s, yet we pay our fair share in taxes and soldier on.