Kerby Anderson

A recent post on redstate.com by someone with the identifier “surgeon67” caught my attention. It provides four important critiques of the current attempt to promote a single-payer, government-run health care plan using the title “Medicare for All.” The four points are: regulations, rationing, cost, and right to healthcare. The discussion of regulations starts with this question: Have we ever seen a government program that didn’t come with a stack of regulations that would make War and Peace seem like a birthday card rhyme? Government money comes with strings. And there isn’t any evidence that all of those rules and regulations make the delivery of healthcare better. Rationing is certainly going to be part of a government-run program since the primary task will be to reduce costs. But if someone else is paying for it, you will be less likely to cut costs. The only way that the government can keep costs down is to institute “guidelines” that explain who can qualify for those expensive medical tests. What about cost? One study estimates that “Medicare for All” will cost an additional $32 trillion over ten years. Here is a simple request listed in the article: Tell me one government program that cost less than or equal to projections. No take your time, I’ll wait. It is possible that even that estimate is off by perhaps a factor of two. The fourth point is the so-called “right to healthcare.” The surgeon says, “I have personally NEVER seen anyone denied care for anything life-threatening because they weren’t covered . . . . If someone has a ruptured spleen, we don’t wait until the visa card clears before we fix it, and we don’t call Blue Cross for a precertification.” “Medicare for All” sounds nice until you begin to look into the details and what it will mean to you and your family.