The first rule of business that I learned in a thirty year career was that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.
The Democrat party did a masterful job this past mid-term election of reshaping the electoral dialogue around healthcare, a strong issue for them and a weak point for their Republican adversaries.
On this issue, some key Democrat politicians have been beating the drum for “Medicare for All” attempting to capitalize politically on the fact that in the five years since the party passed the Affordable Care Act, health insurance premiums have doubled for individuals and increased 140 percent for families. At the same time deductibles have also risen.
As care providers continue to escape the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), 3/4 of insurance plans are now highly restrictive. Many of those providers who have yet to flee Obamacare have consolidated their practices, as conservatives predicted they would, further restricting access to healthcare and raising consumer costs as fewer providers compete for the same customers.
To clean up the mess they have created, some Democrats believe the solution may be to enroll every man, woman and child in America in Medicare. By most estimates the cost of this free healthcare will be north of 30 trillion dollars. The tab in one state alone, California, is estimated at 400 billion dollars.
Beyond the cost issue, Americans will confront the same quality of care issues that have faced citizens of other countries that thought they could nationalize healthcare without any adverse effects including long waits for service.
What remains to be seen is how Americans, not a people known for their patience or willingness to take the long view on policy issues, will react to long lines and waits for service.
To clean up the mess they have created, some Democrats believe the solution may be to enroll every man, woman and child in America in Medicare. By most estimates the cost of this free healthcare will be north of 30 trillion dollars. The tab in one state alone, California is estimated at 400 billion dollars.
For a dispassionate view of what is also called single payer healthcare, I commend to you “The False Promise of ‘Medicare for All’”, an opinion piece by Scott W. Atlas, that ran in the November 13 issue of the Wall Street Journal