A Liberal Critique of the Berner’s Single Payer Plan

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, whose destination for us all is Bernezuela, has set new records for promising to spend taxpayers money.  Even “progressive” groups are beginning to wonder if that makes sense.  The Urban Institute published a piece analyzing the real cost of the Berner’s single payer health care plan.  Now these people may be secret Clinton apologists, but you gotta admit their numbers look pretty solid.   (Urban Inst. Paper)  Bernie’s no shrinking violet and neither is his plan; covers everyone and everything, with no cost-sharing.  Yeehaw, glory days are here again!!  Now even Bernie admits his plan will cost umpteen trillion dollars and he will need to raise taxes a mammoth amount (but only on the rich of course) to pay for it.

Turns out he underestimates by a factor of two, at least according to the good folks at the Urban Institute.  Just a few tidbits to give you a sense of the size of the increased spending under his plan–$519 billion in 2017, mostly additional acute care spending for the non-elderly.  Turns out if people don’t have cost-sharing they use more services, whether they need them or not; of course that has been known to most health experts, but apparently not Bernie, for 50 years.  And federal spending, because this will be a federal plan, will jump by $2.5 trillion.  And of course, the Berner’s tax revenue plan also only raises half the cost of the single-payer system.   I can’t actually take this nonsense seriously; we are still enduring the unintended consequences of our most recent health “reform” fiasco and we would do something even more far-reaching like this?  Bernie should take a look at his own home state of Vermont, which a couple of years ago tried to construct a statewide single-payer plan and had to give up because it would cost way more than its advocates originally claimed it would and paying for it would hike everyone’s taxes a grotesque amount.  So at least we know not everyone in Vermont is a complete idiot, since they did back away from the plan.  Can’t count on Bernie to do that.