The Burdens of BernieCare

Congress’s budget gnomes tip-toe around single-payer’s reality

WSJ editorial. Excerpts:

"CBO acknowledges, for example, that a transition that includes moving 160 million people from employer-sponsored coverage to single payer would be “complicated, challenging, and potentially disruptive” to health care and the economy. You don’t say.

The Sanders Medicare for All bill would ban private coverage that competes with government. CBO notes dryly that single-payer proposals often prohibit private insurance because “some high-income people might prefer to purchase substitutive insurance that offered more generous benefits or greater access to providers.” Can’t have people using their own money to buy better health care."

"Who would decide what government pays for an innovative new treatment for, say, lung cancer and who receives it? CBO walks through some ideas and adds: “Under any of the pricing approaches discussed below, a single-payer system could decide to exclude certain drugs or place those drugs on a nonpreferred drug list because they are too expensive or because they do not have any additional benefit.”

And “unlike a system with competing private insurers, the public plan might not be as quick to meet patients’ needs, such as covering new treatments.” You mean government is less responsive than private business?"

"CBO dares not wade into the details of what all this would cost, though it says “government spending on health care would increase substantially.” Thanks for that. Honest private estimates suggest it would take at least a doubling of individual and corporate taxes. Proponents say the country will save money through lower administrative costs, which CBO says may materialize. But the real savings would have to come from where the money is: cutting payments to doctors and restricting care."