‘MEDICARE FOR ALL’ PLAN = A COSTLY & DANGEROUS DELUSION
that has failed where it has been tried.
“The sheer magnitude of the cost of a “single payer” system—and the taxes required to finance it—should come as a sober warning to taxpayers: Under a single payer model you’ll be paying more than you ever expected,” warns the Daily Signal[1].
GARGANTUAN COSTS
Here is a summary of the Daily Signal article:
Enormous cost of Bernie Sanders’ proposal:
♦ The liberal Urban Institute estimated that the 10-year costs would amount to a stunning $32 trillion.
♦ The Mercatus Center at George Mason University put the cost at $32.6 trillion.
(They made generous concessions and accepted Sanders’ assumptions that the proposal would also generate savings, such as massive payment reductions to doctors and other medical professionals.)
♦ Professor Kenneth Thorpe of Emory University, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton set the 10-year price tag at $24.7 trillion. (He used different assumptions.)
State versions found similar high costs if they enacted a state “single payer” program:
♦ In Florida: The state would have to increase its sales tax from the current 6% to 39% to meet the increase in spending.
♦ In Maryland: It would cost Maryland taxpayers $24 billion per year.
♦ In North Carolina: The total cost of the proposal would hit $72 billion, of which the state would bear $41.9 billion in cost.
♦ In California: A report concluded that the cost would total $400 billion and the state would have to raise $200 billion in new taxes.
MORE TERRIBLE FLAWS
Investor’s Business Daily (IBD)[2] also reported there are more terrible flaws with Bernie Sanders’ government takeover of heath care (a.k.a.”Medicare for all”) besides the gargantuan price tag.
Here is summary of the IBD report:
♦ “Medicare for all” would nearly double the size of the already bloated federal government.
♦ Doubling corporate and individual income taxes wouldn’t cover the costs.
♦ Unrealistic assumptions: Some studies found that Sanders plan would add $32.6 trillion to federal spending in its first 10 years, with costs steadily rising from there. However, the author of the studies made unrealistic assumptions about so-called savings under Sanders’ plan:
The first is a massive cut in payments to providers. Sanders wants to apply Medicare’s below-market rates across the board, which would amount to a roughly 40% cut in payments to doctors and hospitals. Blahous [of the Mercatus Center] figures this will save hundreds of billions of dollars a year.
But cuts of that magnitude would drive doctors out of medicine and hospitals out of business, since the only way providers can afford Medicare’s cut-rate reimbursements today is by charging private payers more.
The study also assumes that shoving everyone into a government health care plan would cut administrative costs by $1.6 trillion over the next decade and prescription drug costs by $846 billion. Neither of those are likely, and wouldn’t make much of a difference in overall spending anyway. Private insurance overhead accounts for about 6% of national health spending, and drugs less than 10%.
There’s also the fact that every other federal health program has seen costs explode “unexpectedly” after they were enacted. The per-enrollee cost of ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion, for example, is almost 49% higher than expected. Medicare itself cost nearly 10 times as much as projected in its first 25 years.
♦ ‘Medicare for all’ means shortages and long waits:
“The only way to control health spending would be to slap stiff price controls on doctors, hospitals and drugs, or ration care,” says IBD.
In the U.S., we would see:
– Chronic shortages of doctors nationwide.
– Hospital overcrowding would be epidemic.
– Waits for everything from hip replacements to cataract surgery to cancer treatments would be extensive.
– Drug innovation would come to a virtual standstill.
– There would be endless fights over the size of the government’s health budget, along with massive amounts of waste, fraud and abuse.
“[T]his is precisely what’s happened in countries that have already gone down the “Medicare for all” road,” reports IBD while giving us some examples:
In Canada:
– The average wait time for a hip replacement is nearly two years in some provinces.
– Patients with cataracts can end up waiting a year for surgery.
In the UK:
– The UK has fewer doctors, nurses and hospital beds per capita than any other industrialized nation, and is in a state of almost constant crisis.
The Veterans Heath Administration:
– The Veterans Health Administration — once touted by the left as a model of socialized medicine — has seen deadly delays and massive corruption, even as its budget ballooned in size.
♦ Socialized medicine and central planning’s Failures:
We already know central planning never works, since it has miserably failed where it’s been tried. It didn’t work in the Soviet Union. It doesn’t work in North Korea or Cuba, and it’s causing untold misery in Venezuela.
“Medicare for all” isn’t just wishful thinking. It’s a dangerous delusion.
SOURCES:
– The Daily Signal, “Some State Officials Want to Adopt Bernie-Style Health Care. Here’s What It Would Cost” (Nov. 4, 2018)
https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/11/04/some-state-officials-want-to-adopt-bernie-style-health-care-heres-what-it-would-cost/
– ‘Medicare For All’ Would Cost $32.6 Trillion, And That’s Not Even The Worst Of It (July 30, 2018)
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/medicare-for-all-32-6-trillion-dollars-socialized-medicine/
