A single-payer healthcare system would not be an economic disaster, but it would be a "living hell" for Americans forced to deal with a government bureaucracy, actor and writer Ben Stein told Newsmax TV on Thursday.
In an interview with "Newsmax Now" host Bill Tucker, the former speechwriter for Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford dismisses the argument against Sen. Bernie Sanders's healthcare plan that it would bankrupt the country.
"The country will just print money and go through all eternity," he said. "It takes a long time to bankrupt the country. But dealing with government bureaucracy is just absolute living hell."
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"I think we're better off dealing with private insurance if we possibly can," he added. "In the Nixon days . . . we had a simple idea for health insurance: Those who can afford health insurance, they buy health insurance, [those] who can't afford it, send them a check to buy it through a health insurance company."
Stein also weighed in on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects young illegal immigrants who were brought to the country as children.
"If we're a nation of laws, then we enforce the law and we have borders," he said. "If we're not a nation of laws, we don't enforce the law. But if Congress changes the law, then we are a nation of laws."
He added, however, people have an unrealistic vision of the so-called Dreamers protected in the program.
"The idea that these people are all dreamers, are all at MIT or . . . studying to be physicians or mathematicians is just nonsense," he said.
"But I will say this . . . We in our little household are lucky enough to employ an incredible number of Hispanics, immigrants, and children of immigrants, and they are saints," he said. "I look up to them and they inspire me. And so if we can somehow figure out a way to get more of them in this country we would be a lot better off."