Antonio Delgado’s Willfully Misleading Attack was Designed to Scare Seniors, Can Voters Trust Him on Healthcare At All

Valatie, NY – Yesterday afternoon, PolitiFact New York declared Antonio Delgado’s claim that John Faso voted for an  “age tax on seniors” is false. The claim was made by Delgado’s campaign in two television ads. His false attack followed identical attacks from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Nancy Pelosi’s SuperPAC.

• “However, the provision didn’t apply to those on Medicare, or people over the age of 50 with coverage through large employers. Also, it wouldn’t have affected New York seniors, as the state has prohibited insurers from charging higher rates based on age since the early 1990s. The claim contains elements of truth but glosses over details and ignores critical facts. We rate it Mostly False.” (Politifact New York, 10/03/18)

“Antonio Delgado’s clearly false statements beg the question whether he can be trusted to say anything truthful on healthcare,” said Joe Gierut, communications director for the Faso campaign. “This ad was specifically designed to scare seniors, and to do so on completely false premises. Antonio Delgado should be ashamed of himself for preying on seniors, and voters across the 19th district should ask themselves whether they can trust a carpetbagger who supports a government takeover of our healthcare to represent them in Congress.”

• Delgado said we have to “fight with all of our might to get the profit motive out of the health care system and fight toward a Medicare for All system.” (CD 19 Democratic Debate, 06/04/18, Clip begins 06/04/18)
• “And I think we can have reasonable disagreement on how to achieve the outcome that we all most desire and as I said repeatedly, the outcome is to push time and time and time again with great effort toward a system of Medicare for All.” (NY Candidate Forum, 05/12/18, Clip begins 1:26:15)
• “…we will make our way in a very natural organic way towards a single-payer system with the system being able to take that transition over an extended period of time in a far more democratic process. That to me is the best approach thank you.” (New York District 19 Congressional Candidate Forum, The Contenders, 12/14/17, Clip begins 15:20)

The Democrats’ single-payer plan would end Medicare as we know it by raiding the Medicare Trust Fund, which seniors have paid into their entire lives.

Additionally, their single payer plan would cost over $32 trillion, which would certainly require a massive new tax increase in order to pay for it. Estimates concluded that doubling federal individual and corporate incomes taxes would not even pay for the plan. To this point, Antonio Delgado has still not said how he proposes to pay for this massive plan.

• “A doubling of all currently projected federal individual and corporate income tax collections would be insufficient to finance the added federal costs of the plan.” (Charles Blahous, “The Costs Of A National Single-Payer Healthcare System,” The Mercatus Center , 7/30/18)

Finally, their single-payer would kick 158 million Americans off their employer and union sponsored health care plans and into a one-size-fits-all government plan.