Their first order of business was approving the Democratic Party Platform, the set of principles, goals, and policy positions that will guide the party’s approach to governance over the course of the next year.
“If someone tells you who they are, believe them" is a time-honored rule in politics. And if you read through this 90-page document, it becomes clear that the Democrats are telling the American people that socialism has now become the official doctrine of their party. Nowhere was this more evident than in the platform’s healthcare section.
While advocating near-full control of the healthcare system, once reserved for the most radical Democrats in Congress, it’s now part of the Democratic Party’s official party vision.
For nearly seven decades, the most extreme center-left members of Congress have introduced legislation to mandate “Medicare for All,” which would implement a “single-payer” (meaning “government-run”) healthcare system in the United States. None of these bills ever pass, and the version introduced last year received the support of less than one in four Members of the House. However, with this pure dose of socialism now supported by more than 75% of Democrats nationwide, the DNC added flowery language to its party platform about “expanding health care nationwide” and “expanding the Affordable Care Act” — clear dog whistles for this socialist idea. What was once exclusively advocated for by the likes of more extreme members like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is now the party's mainstream position.
The costs of this trainwreck of an idea would be astronomical. Some estimates place the price tag at $4 trillion, nearly double the government’s current spending level.
Quality of healthcare service would undoubtedly decrease, too, as all doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals become government employees. Just imagine receiving the same quality of service at a hospital that you get when you renew your license. That’s a scary thought for everyone except Big Pharma, which stands to benefit from the widely inflated, government-created demand for its products and services that Medicare for All would provide. Speaking of Big Pharma…While Democrats have not been shy about currying favor with this interest group (February reporting from the New York Post demonstrated this point well), doing the drug industry's bidding is now a part of the official Democratic Party platform too.
In its new policy document, the DNC took a direct shot at pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), the companies that businesses hire to negotiate drug pricing with Big Pharma and keep costs low. No doubt, it did this to please the drugmakers that are currently spending millions of dollars in lobbying and on advertising to convince lawmakers to regulate these private companies, which negatively affects their bottom lines. And yet, even though research from the independent, nonpartisan Government Accountability Office and many economists have shown that PBMs reduce the list prices of drugs for consumers pretty significantly, the new Democratic platform labels them as problem actors. So much for “stopping the influence of special interests,” which is laughably also part of the Democrats’ newly passed party vision.
The list of bad policies in the DNC’s new platform goes on ad nauseam. From taking legal action against energy companies for the supposed crime of emitting carbon and mandating a federal takeover of elections, the Democrats are clearly intent on transforming the United States into a mirror image of the world’s authoritarian socialist regimes, where the government is all-powerful, citizens lose their freedoms, and dissenters get treated as enemies. It reads like a bad novel that Fidel Castro would have written, extolling the virtues of political change that must be forced down people’s throats. This would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous – dangerous to American families, dangerous to our security, and dangerous to our way of life. Hopefully, the American people make note of this and act accordingly when going to their polling places this autumn.
Michael J.Pappas is a former Member of Congress from New Jersey.
