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There has been any number of articles and analyses
concerning the proposed “Medicare For All.” A recent on-line report can be
found at Forbes here; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “dodges questions” on how to pay
for it here (spoiler: she doesn’t know); and the NY Times explains what is good about the policy here (what a surprise!).
Yesterday, Justin Haskins published an accessible analysis at Townhall entitled “Socialists Won’t Rest Until We Have Single-Payer Health
Care. We Must Stop Them.” The quote marks are there because that’s the title of
the article, but they could be interpreted instead as scare quotes. Excerpts:
The 2018 midterms could someday be
remembered as the beginning of the Democratic Party’s full embrace of creating
a single-payer health care system in the United States. For the first time in
American history, a large number of Democrats, many of whom identify as
socialists, openly campaigned for the creation of a government-run health
insurance model.
For instance, Democratic Socialists
of America member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who won 78 percent of the vote on
Election Day, championed Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) “Medicare for All”
proposal, calling it the “ethical,
logical, and affordable path to ensuring no person goes without dignified
healthcare.” According to Ocasio-Cortez, “Medicare for All will reduce
the existing costs of healthcare (and make Medicare cheaper, too!) by allowing
all people in the US to buy into a universal healthcare system.”
Ocasio-Cortez says she supports a
universal system that would include “full vision, dental, and mental healthcare
- because we know that true healthcare is about the whole self, not just your
yearly physical.”
The cost of enacting such a radical
program would be astronomical. Researchers at the Mercatus Center say Sen.
Sanders’ plan would cost $32.6
trillion in its first decade, and they note that even if Congress were
to double taxes paid by individuals and corporations, it wouldn’t be enough to
pay for the program. That should terrify you, especially since the U.S.
government’s deficit for the 2018 fiscal year was $782 billion and the national
debt now stands at a $21.7 trillion.
But as shocking as the price tag
for single-payer health care would be, it pales in comparison to the numerous
health care-related problems that would be created by such a model. For
starters, the government has an absolutely terrible record of providing health
care. One example is the Veterans Health Administration, which is run by the
federal government. It routinely suffers from underfunding and long wait times,
which has forced the agency to allow veterans to go elsewhere to receive care.
As the Military Times notes,
“About one-third of all VA medical appointments today are … conducted by
physicians outside the department’s system.”
. . .
If the federal government can’t
properly run the VA system or Medicaid—or even the Post Office—why does anyone
think it could manage one of the largest industries in the United States today?
Much more about the VA, mortality rates, and other scary
stats are here.
RELATED: Veterans in the greater Cleveland are scraping the bottom
of the barrel. Via Breitbart:
The
10 worst cities for veterans included Ohio metros — Cleveland (#92) and Toledo
(#95). California contributed San
Bernardino (#94) and Fresno (#97). Also at the bottom of the pack were
Philadelphia (#91), Baton Rouge (#93), Baltimore (#96), Memphis (#98), Newark
(#99), and Detroit (#100).
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