Posted
Sep 13, 2018 at 12:01 AM
President
Barack Obama made a stunning policy shift on Friday, endorsing
“Medicare-for-all” — a single-payer health system — for the nation. Most
Democrats contending for the 2020 presidential nomination, and many Dems vying
for Congressional seats this fall, are backing it, too.
But
beware. They’re pulling a bait-and-switch. The phrase “Medicare-for-all” sounds
as American as apple pie. A new Reuters poll shows 70 percent of Americans
respond to it favorably. That’s because the public isn’t getting the truth
about what it means. The actual plan these Democrats are pushing doesn’t look
anything like Medicare. They’re slapping the Medicare label on what would be
dangerously inadequate health care.
For
starters, it would rip away private health coverage from half of all Americans,
including the 157 million who get their insurance the old-fashioned way —
earning it through a job. Conveniently, Democrats are forgetting to tell you
that private insurance would be banned under their scheme; employers would be
barred from covering workers or their families. Union members and executives
who bargained for gold-plated private plans would lose them and have to settle
for the same one-size-fits-all public coverage as people who refuse to work at
all. Even immigrants here illegally would get the same benefits. What’s the
point of working?
“Medicare-for-all”
is no longer a fringe proposal favored by the extreme left. It’s gaining steam.
Republicans who failed miserably to communicate a case for repealing and
replacing Obamacare cannot make that mistake again. They need to warn voters
about the dangers of single-payer health care.
Under
“Medicare-for-all” — the legislation introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders —
Americans would be automatically enrolled in the public program. Kids would be
enrolled at birth.
The new
scheme would guarantee hospital care, doctors’ visits, even dental, vision and
long-term care, all provided by Uncle Sam. But that’s only until the money runs
out. Sanders’ bill imposes hard-and-fast dollar caps on how much health care
the country can consume yearly. That means limiting mammograms, hip
replacements and other procedures. Sanders’ bill creates new regional health
authorities to curb “overutilization” of care.
Seniors
and baby boomers are big losers under “Medicare-for-all.” Whenever boomers have
to vie with younger people for health resources, they get pushed to the back of
the line. In the United Kingdom’s single-payer system, boomers are turned away
for hip replacements. They’re told they have fewer years of life ahead to
benefit from costly medical procedures. British women are livid because many
are being refused breast reconstruction after lumpectomies and mastectomies.
At
least in Britain, people are free to buy private insurance and go outside the
government system for care. But that’s not true under “Medicare-for-all.” You’d
be trapped.
Dems
backing Sanders’ bill point to Medicare’s cost efficiencies and say they can be
expanded to the whole population. That’s ridiculous. Medicare pays only about
88 cents for every dollar of care, shortchanging hospitals and doctors. These
providers take the payments because they can shift the unmet costs on their
patients with private insurance. But if everyone is on “Medicare-for-all,” no
cost-shifting is possible. The only alternative is lowering the quality of care
— longer waits, limited access to technology.
Single-payer
advocates don’t deny it. Stanford economist Victor Fuchs argues in the Journal
of the American Medical Association that curbing the use of mammograms, new
drugs and diagnostic technologies would make single-payer affordable. In short,
go low-tech. But millions of American women have survived breast cancer thanks
to high-tech screening and new gene-based therapies. Low-tech medicine would be
a death sentence.
The
United Kingdom’s rock bottom survival rates for breast, lung, ovarian and
pancreatic cancer are the result of that low-tech approach. British newspapers
are declaring, “Cancer shame as UK survival rates lag behind the rest of the
world.”
Is that
what we want in America?
Betsy McCaughey is a senior fellow at the
London Center for Policy Research. Contact her at betsy@betsymccaughey.com.
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