Trump Claims Democrats’ Health Plan Would Destroy Medicare As We Know It. Sense or Nonsense?

President Trump is rebranding himself as the defender of Medicare against Democratic plans that he claims will destroy it. “They’re going to ruin your Medicare,” he said at recent rally in Montana.

They want to turn America in to Venezuela. I don’t think so. Democrats would destroy Medicare with ‘Medicare for All’ — you heard that — ‘Medicare for All,’ until they run out of money, which would be like in the third day.

Does that make any sense, or is it just fear mongering? At first glance, it seems like a strange claim. After all, Bernie Sanders’ proposal for Medicare for All, a favorite of progressive candidates in this fall’s election, promises clear advantages to people already on the current version of Medicare. They would no longer have to pay the modest deductibles and copays now required, they would no longer face lifetime caps on hospital days, and they would qualify vision and dental services that are now not covered. True, Medicare for All would be expensive, but under Sanders’ proposal, it would be fully funded by a combination of premiums and tax increases.

There are, however, some scenarios under which Trump’s warnings could conceivably come to pass. One is that Democrats, in a future, narrowly-divided Congress, might be able…