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September 8, 2021
There’s Never Enough Money for Single Payer
‘Read my lips’, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in effect in 2019, ‘no new taxes.’ But now he wants higher taxes to help pay for the increasing cost of Britain’s National Health Service. Britain’s single payer system has been bleeding money and calling for more funds as long as I’ve been tracking it. Chronic funding shortfalls have led to staffing shortages, long waiting lists, and withheld surgeries. This means, among other things, that cancer patients are left in the dark about treatments and side effects, newborns die at high rates, and people with lifetime medical conditions like cystic fibrosis are short-changed. Fixing the wait time crisis alone in the UK would cost an astronomical amount of money.
Yet, the American Left has been trying to bring UK-style single payer national healthcare to the United States for the last hundred years. They won’t quit. Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal may have put their push for Medicare for All on the back burner a few months ago, but this was just a tactical retreat. Jayapal and some 125 co-sponsors just introduced a bill to lower the Medicare eligibility age to 60. The idea is to salami-slice their way to single payer if they can’t get the whole enchilada in one bite. (How’s that for mixing metaphors?)
In New York, it was reported the Democrats had enough votes in the legislature at the beginning of the summer to pass single payer and override any veto. This was despite warnings the plan would hike payroll taxes by $253 billion, more than the entire state budget. Critics also pointed out the proposal would kill jobs, and lead to long wait times for medical care just like in the UK and Canada. At the end of last year, almost 30,000 people were waiting for surgery in the Canadian single payer system. More were waiting an average 22 weeks just to see a specialist. It’s called ‘death by waiting’ and that certainly is one way to keep costs down. Pressure groups run around cheerleading for single payer in the U.S., but most Americans would find these wait times completely unacceptable.
At the federal level, we could double all corporate and individual income taxes and that still wouldn’t cover the cost of single payer. Critics also point out doctors would get paid 40 percent less under single payer and this would eventually cut the supply of new doctors. Nine in ten hospitals would run chronic deficits, which hardly sounds like a sustainable system to me.
People who push single payer don’t have the sense they were born with. People with any sense at all will realize that anything that is free at the point of service will generate escalating demands that can never be met. Free at the point of service is the fatal flaw of single payer and that’s why there’s never enough money for single payer. Single payer is pie-in-the-sky and let’s hope it stays that way. I guarantee you, you don’t want the pain of single payer inflicted on you or your loved ones.
There’s Never Enough Money for Single Payer
‘Read my lips’, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in effect in 2019, ‘no new taxes.’ But now he wants higher taxes to help pay for the increasing cost of Britain’s National Health Service. Britain’s single payer system has been bleeding money and calling for more funds as long as I’ve been tracking it. Chronic funding shortfalls have led to staffing shortages, long waiting lists, and withheld surgeries. This means, among other things, that cancer patients are left in the dark about treatments and side effects, newborns die at high rates, and people with lifetime medical conditions like cystic fibrosis are short-changed. Fixing the wait time crisis alone in the UK would cost an astronomical amount of money.
Yet, the American Left has been trying to bring UK-style single payer national healthcare to the United States for the last hundred years. They won’t quit. Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal may have put their push for Medicare for All on the back burner a few months ago, but this was just a tactical retreat. Jayapal and some 125 co-sponsors just introduced a bill to lower the Medicare eligibility age to 60. The idea is to salami-slice their way to single payer if they can’t get the whole enchilada in one bite. (How’s that for mixing metaphors?)
In New York, it was reported the Democrats had enough votes in the legislature at the beginning of the summer to pass single payer and override any veto. This was despite warnings the plan would hike payroll taxes by $253 billion, more than the entire state budget. Critics also pointed out the proposal would kill jobs, and lead to long wait times for medical care just like in the UK and Canada. At the end of last year, almost 30,000 people were waiting for surgery in the Canadian single payer system. More were waiting an average 22 weeks just to see a specialist. It’s called ‘death by waiting’ and that certainly is one way to keep costs down. Pressure groups run around cheerleading for single payer in the U.S., but most Americans would find these wait times completely unacceptable.
At the federal level, we could double all corporate and individual income taxes and that still wouldn’t cover the cost of single payer. Critics also point out doctors would get paid 40 percent less under single payer and this would eventually cut the supply of new doctors. Nine in ten hospitals would run chronic deficits, which hardly sounds like a sustainable system to me.
People who push single payer don’t have the sense they were born with. People with any sense at all will realize that anything that is free at the point of service will generate escalating demands that can never be met. Free at the point of service is the fatal flaw of single payer and that’s why there’s never enough money for single payer. Single payer is pie-in-the-sky and let’s hope it stays that way. I guarantee you, you don’t want the pain of single payer inflicted on you or your loved ones.