By Charles C. W. Cooke
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Bernie Sanders may have reacted badly to the news (again)
that his much-coveted single-payer health-care system would cost at least $32
trillion in new federal spending over a decade. But not everyone has. At Vox, Dylan Scott echoed a line that was
popular at Jacobin and Mother Jones, and cast the price tag as
a bargain that would actually cut
overall health spending:
Mercatus is projecting a $32
trillion increase in federal spending,
above current projected government expenditures, from 2022 to 2031.
In terms of overall health care spending in the United States over the same
period, however, they are actually projecting a slight reduction.
There is the rub. The federal
government is going to spend a lot more money on health care, but the country
is going to spend about the same.
Ah, I see. So the Sanders “Plan” is going to save money. And all we need to do to get
to that happy state of affairs is:
• Force every
doctor and hospital in America to accept Medicare reimbursement rates for all
patients — these are 40 percent lower than the rates paid by private insurance
— while assuming that this would have absolutely no effect on their capacity or
willingness to provide services
• Raise taxes by
10 percent of GDP — overnight
• Explain to the
150 million people with private insurance that the rules have been changed so
dramatically that (a) they can no longer keep their plans, and (b) henceforth,
tens of millions among them will be paying more in taxes than they were
previously paying in both premiums and out-of-pocket costs
Easy!
No comments:
Post a Comment