Bernie Sanders is offering a lot of government services, including "Medicare for all," which promises to pay for everyone's healthcare. So when he becomes president, will he raise taxes on the middle class? Sanders was offered up this question as a lead-off in the June 27 Democratic presidential debate. He blathered for a full minute without answering, then he had to be asked a second time before he finally produced an answer: "Yes, they will pay more in taxes," he said, "but less in healthcare."

OK, maybe. But this answer actually raises far more questions than it answers.

The first and most uncomfortable question was raised moments later in the same debate by Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet. Bernie Sanders' home state of Vermont, governed entirely by Democrats at the time, killed off its proposal for single-payer healthcare. Democratic Gov. Pete Shumlin signed the bill to implement the program in 2011. He also pulled the plug on the program in 2015 when he found out that it would double his state's budget. Vermonters would have had to pay an 11.5% payroll tax, plus a 9-point increase in the state income tax.

In Colorado, voters rejected single-payer healthcare for the same reason, with 79% voting against a plan that would have more than doubled their state budget. And in California, where Democrats have the power to do just about any crazy thing they like, Democrats killed their own Healthy California single-payer healthcare plan because it would have tripled their state budget.

When this fact was put to Sanders, he gave a boilerplate answer about how single-payer healthcare can work "when we tell the insurance companies and the drug companies that their day is gone." Uh, OK, but how about a real answer that means something?

Another uncomfortable question came up later, when every single Democrat on stage raised his or her hand to indicate that yes, their version of healthcare reform will cover illegal immigrants. When the illegal immigrant question came up about Obamacare, Democrats became indignant; of course it won't pay for illegal immigrants! Today, they've turned a corner and embraced a full-on open-borders position. Everyone on stage agreed that no illegal immigrant should be deported unless they commit a serious crime (actually, only Joe Biden offered that caveat, but we assume the others would too).

Unfortunately, the Democrats' open borders appetite is just not going to fit their "Medicare for all" budget. The cost of "SandersCare" without a massive influx of illegal immigration is generously and conservatively estimated at $32 trillion over 10 years. If American taxpayers are going to pay the healthcare costs of the record numbers of unskilled workers now illegally crossing the border from Central America, then that estimate is going to have to be revised upward significantly. And that goes without mentioning the responsibility that comes with such generous offers that induce people (and their children) to their deaths in what is clearly a perilous crossing.

There's another problem with that $32 trillion estimate on "Medicare for all." It makes the unrealistic assumption that doctors and hospitals will just accept massive pay cuts and keep providing the same services for much less. As former Rep. John Delaney bravely explained in the first night of Democratic debates, this just won't happen. Either the estimate will go up, way up, by perhaps 50 or 100%, or hospitals will close and doctors will quit. Practicing doctors will want to get out from under their six-figure annual malpractice insurance premiums, and young people considering the medical profession will think twice or three or four times before taking medical school.

This means that in the end, the middle class will likely wait in long lines for healthcare (as Canadians already must), getting lower quality care and paying more for it in taxes.

The Democrats on stage Thursday night who embraced "Medicare for all" were not just wrong, they were out of their minds. The federal government should not stupidly jump in where Sanders' own left-wing, hippie-filled state was too sensible to tread.