For decades, extreme radical leftists have wanted to impose a single-payer health care system on the US. Over that time numerous fantasy reports on supposed savings have been published. With the Dem gains in the recent election, we can expect an effort to pass such a bill, which if passed will be vetoed by the President. Having Dems on record as voting for such a system should aid Reps, as if this ever came to fruition it would totally disrupt everyone’s health care and raise our deficits and debt to an even higher level. A new paper on NBER puts out the latest delusion on how great a single-payer system would be. Please note that absolutely no providers are going to sign up for this, as they currently have a system that allows them to charge very high and rising prices and the primary way the single-payer nuts would attempt to pay for their fantasy is by lowering reimbursement to providers. I am sure providers are eager to take Medicare reimbursement rates for all the patients they treat. (Medrxiv Paper)
These authors claim not only will such a plan save money, but it will save lives too!! I have been reading this stuff for so long that I find it pointless to try to debunk the detailed points. They claim that the Medicare for All act would reduce spending by $1 trillion and save 114,000 lives. What is built on? Not any real data, just what they told a model to tell them. Sources of that $1 trillion decrease are amusing to read. Administrative savings? From government, give me a break. Lower drug prices? Not as long as Dems keep getting big contributions from pharmaceutical firms. Eliminating fraud? Most hilarious, look at Minnesota to see how Dems deal with fraud. Avoidable emergency care? Seriously.
I will simply say that the notion that a number of deaths would be avoided is just completely made up. Supposedly. uninsured people die more often than insured ones, but again, there is no demographic adjustment and the reality is that many uninsured people are young and healthy and choose not to waste money on insurance.
I will flatly say that switching to Medicare for All would be a devastating economic event. Total health spending would actually increase. Millions of jobs would be lost in private insurers and providers. Investments would plummet. These people have no plan for any kind of transition; they are academics with no real world experience and no idea how to create a plan for such a massive disruption.
What people should demand answers to is what will happen to provider access and quality of care under such a system. The US has the best access in the world and the highest quality of care for any particular disease or treatment. Facts stated to the contrary like life expectancy and infant mortality don’t adjust for demographics or for poor health behaviors, like drug use and obesity. Low-income people have access to Medicaid benefits that are better than the typical worker has. Whether they take advantage of that coverage is a different issue and is the source of many so-called “access” issues. The access is there but people don’t use it.
If Americans want to know why to reject this absurdity, all they have to do is look north of the border, where people have long access waits and come to America to get health care if they can afford to do so.
