AI-generated composite illustration created with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, using reference photographs of Troy Jackson and Abdul El-Sayed. Bernie Sanders, Troy Jackson, and Abdul El-Sayed are depicted in an editorial context related to Medicare for All.

Four weeks before the midterms, the Democratic Party’s left flank, an increasingly larger part of its base, is running on Medicare for All. The Democratic Socialists of America now require every member they elect to uphold a platform promising healthcare “at no cost to individuals.”

Several candidates have noted their support of some version of universal government healthcare, all of which are disastrous: Abdul El-Sayed (Michigan), Troy Jackson (Maine), Josh Turek (Iowa), Peggy Flanagan (Minnesota), Sherrod Brown (Ohio), and James Talarico (Texas) through his “Medicare for Y’all” initiative.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is buttressing these candidates with a new Yale study (that hasn’t been peer reviewed yet) claiming his bill would save $1 trillion a year and promises that it will be paid for by “the rich.” Unfortunately for them, Mr. Sanders has already put in writing who would actually pay: anyone earning more than $29,000 a year.

An expansion of government healthcare would lead to extensive low- and middle-class tax hikes and would reduce Americans’ access to care. 

Medicare for All Would Lead to Trillions in Low- and Middle-Class Tax Hikes 

By Senator Bernie Sanders’ own admission, Americans making more than $29,000 per year would pay more in taxes under Medicare For All.  

These tax hikes would hit American families at every income level and businesses large and small. The proposal increases taxes by $13.4 trillion over the next decade. The White House Council of Economic Advisers puts Medicare for All’s 10-year cost at $47.41 trillion. Even while taking more money from low- and middle-income Americans, Sanders’ tax plan covers less than 30 percent of the bill.

The list of proposed tax hikes from Senator Sanders include:

  • A New, 4 Percent Employee Payroll Tax. This would impose another 4 percent payroll tax on households which he calls an “income-based premium paid by households.” This increases taxes on American families and individuals by $3.5 trillion, and kicks in at $29,000 in household earnings.
  • A New, 7.5 Percent Employer Payroll Tax. This would impose another 7.5 percent payroll tax on employees which he calls an “income-based premium paid by employers.” This is a $3.9 trillion tax increase over ten years.
  • Eliminating Health Tax “Expenditures.” The proposal would ban employer-provided insurance and repeal the deduction for health care, increasing taxes on businesses by over $3.5 trillion over a decade.
  • This proposal would also repeal Health Savings Accounts, which are utilized by an estimated 72 million Americans. These tax advantaged savings accounts largely benefit the middle class – roughly half of all HSAs are owned by families earning between $60,000 and $200,000. The deduction for cafeteria plans and the medical expense deduction is also eliminated.
  • 77 Percent Death Tax. This would raise the death tax rate to 77 percent for inheritances. Under the proposal, the death tax would kick in at $3.5 million with a rate of 45 percent. This proposal will increase taxes by $315 billion over ten years.
  • Wealth Tax. This would impose an annual wealth tax of 1 percent kicking in above $21 million in assets. This proposal will increase taxes by $1.3 trillion over ten years.
  • Bank Tax. This would impose a tax on financial institutions totaling $800 billion over ten years.
  • Broaden the Self Employment Tax. This would require business owners to report more of their business income as salary, increasing the amount of self-employment tax owed. This would increase taxes by $247 billion over ten years. 

The Council of Economic Advisers estimates that tax-financing the DSA agenda – overwhelmingly Medicare for All – would shrink the average household’s after-tax wages by 28.4 percent – an average of $22,000.

Medicare for All Would Reduce Americans’ Access to Care 

Medicare for All promises to eliminate the employer-based coverage which more than 180 million Americans rely on, even with about 81 percent of those people being satisfied with their coverage.  

This proposal goes even further left than most foreign versions of socialized medicine. Canada, for example, has about 30 percent of its healthcare spending coming from the private market. The socialists’ proposal would have none. 

Further, countries which have gone down a path of government control and socialized medicine haven’t just seen higher costs, they’ve seen longer waits and dangerously poor care. In 2018, the England’s National Health Service (NHS) cut or restricted access to 17 medical operations which they deemed ‘unnecessary’ to cut costs. NHS’s February 2026 figures showed 7.22 million people waiting for treatment, with 62.6 percent seen within the 18-week target. The NHS constitution standard is 92 percent, which is a target that hasn’t been met since 2016.

In 2025, physicians across Canada reported a median wait time of 28.6 weeks between a referral from a GP and receipt of treatment. Waits were longest for neurosurgery (49.9 weeks) and orthopedic surgery (48.6 weeks). Regarding diagnostics, 8.8 weeks for CT scans and 18.1 weeks for MRI scans. Patients in Canada were waiting for 1.4 million procedures in 2025.

In every country where it’s been tried, a single-payer system eliminates choice and gives government the power to make healthcare decisions for regular people, often to their detriment.   

In addition to poor care and long waits, socialized medicine would also reduce innovation, thus limiting future access to lifesaving, life-changing treatments. The U.S. is currently a world leader when it comes to medical innovation. According to research by the Galen Institute, 290 new medical substances were launched worldwide between 2011 and 2018. The U.S. had access to 90 percent of these cures, a rate far greater than comparable foreign countries. By comparison, the United Kingdom had access to 60 percent of medicines, Japan had 50 percent, and Canada had just 44 percent. According to EFPIA’s 2025 WAIT survey, the percentage of new medicines that were fully available in Europe declined from an average of 42 percent in 2019 to 28 percent in 2025.

This effort already failed in Senator Sanders’ own state. Vermont tested single payer, and its own Democratic governor pulled the plug. In 2011, Gov. Peter Shumlin signed a law to make Vermont the first state with a publicly financed system. By December 2014, his administration had finished the financing model. The program would have required a payroll tax of 11.5 percent, and a sliding-scale income tax that would have topped out at 9.5 percent. A family of four with $100,000 of income or more would pay the full 9.5 percent tax. Shumlin concluded, “These are simply not tax rates that I can responsibly support or urge the Legislature to pass.” He called single-payer “the greatest disappointment of my political life so far.”

One state of 650,000 people couldn’t make the math work. Now, Sanders and other left-wing politicians want to run the same failed experiment on 340 million Americans.

A socialized healthcare system would lead to massive tax increases on middle-income Americans, would reduce access to quality care, and would decimate medical innovation.