Bernie’s Medicare-For-All Bailout

Usually politicians pass a bailout to clean up a mess they’ve created in the past, but Bernie Sanders is now promising cash up front. Witness the democratic socialist’s opening offer to the hospitals he’d bankrupt with his Medicare-for-All bill.

Mr. Sanders last month suggested a $20 billion federal bailout fund for struggling hospitals. He announced this plan in Philadelphia, where the city’s Hahnemann Hospital is in bankruptcy proceedings. He spins the failure of the hospital as a tale of corporate greed perpetrated by a private-equity firm.

Yet one under-appreciated reality is that nearly two-thirds of Hahnemann’s patients are on government insurance, either Medicare or Medicaid, a fact noted in passing in a letter to Health and Human Services from members of the Pennsylvania delegation in Congress. This detail is significant because Medicare and Medicaid are notorious for paying hospitals less than what it costs to provide services.