Why Bernie Sanders' Single Payer Health Care Plan Is a Total Disaster

From Heritage.org (Sept. 14):

Americans face a stark choice on what their health care will look like in the future.

They can adopt a government-run health-care system, financed by new and heavy federal taxation, with federal officials making all the key decisions about medical benefits and services. Or, they can adopt a system in which individuals control health-care dollars and decisions, including the kinds of health plans, benefits and treatments that best suit their needs.

Option one, commonly referred to as a “single payer system,” makes health care a government monopoly. Option two, based on personal choice, relies on voluntary collaboration and competition among plans and providers to control health care costs.

Today, we have neither.

What we have is a highly bureaucratic system: one in which the government controls financing for roughly half of U.S. health care; one in which personal choice and competition are rapidly declining; one in which the health-care costs are excessive. Additionally, federal officials are exercising detailed regulatory control over health plans, benefits and even the practice of medicine itself.

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Sen. Bernie Sanders, with the cosponsorship of sixteen Senate Democrats, has decided to give the current drift to a government monopoly a giant shove by introducing “The Medicare for All Act of 2017.” The bill would replace private health insurance, including employer-sponsored health insurance, with a new and expanded version of the traditional Medicare program.

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Economists and health-policy specialists will spend the next few weeks and months analyzing Sanders’ bill. At the end of that process, we should have a pretty clear idea of how this particular proposal will affect doctors, patients and taxpayers.

But we can already predict some of the economic consequences, at least in general terms. That’s because imposition of a government health-care monopoly—be it in the form of the Medicare fee-for-service system, the British National Health Service or the Canadian health system—has certain economic features in common.

First, such a system will rely on broad-based taxation, usually in the form of some sort of payroll tax. For example, liberals in Colorado pushed a single-payer initiative in 2016 to be financed by a 10 percent payroll tax, but it failed at the ballot box. Sen. Sanders has proposed a number of “options” to finance his proposal: a 7.5 percent payroll tax on employers, plus a 4 percent “income-based premium” on all Americans, the elimination of the tax breaks on employer-sponsored health insurance, and a series of new taxes on the wealthy.   

Last year, Sanders proposed a more modest 6.2 percent employer payroll tax, plus a 2.2 percent universal income tax, as new taxes on “the rich.” A 2016 analysis of that proposal by Emory University Professor Kenneth Thorpe concluded:

The new tax burden would vary dramatically by income. Low-income working families would pay 2.2 percent of taxable income and face a 6.2 percent reduction in wages traced to the employer payroll tax. Individuals and families earning over $250,000 would face a 40 percent increase in taxes to finance the plan and pay for most of the new costs of the plan.

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Congressional liberals have a clear vision of health care. They know just where they want to take America. Their agenda is based on is heavier taxation, higher federal spending, larger government programs and ever greater government control over the economy.

Congressional conservatives need to offer America something better: a positive vision of health reform based on personal freedom, choice and voluntary collaboration. They need to get back to work, and back in the game.  [read more]

In other words what the Left wants to do is from the same old playbook: Big gov’t spending. That’s all they know. It’s like a reflex.