Arthur “Tim”
Garson Jr., Opinion contributor Published 5:00 a.m. ET April
12, 2019 | Updated 8:39 a.m. ET April 12, 2019
Start by paying doctors by salary, letting Medicare negotiate
drug prices, and getting patients to stop making expensive, unnecessary trips
to the ER.
What do Medicare for All, the Green New Deal
and a 70% marginal tax rate all have in common? They’re dramatic shifts in
public policy and none of them are remotely possible, at least right
now.
That doesn’t mean they’re bad ideas. Quite the
contrary: there are strong arguments to make for each of these proposals.
Health coverage for all, reducing pollution and increasing taxes on the very
wealthy represent basic ideas (ignore the current labels) that are attractive
to many Americans.
The problem is that it may be decade or more
before any of them have a chance of being politically viable. And if lawmakers
spend too much capital pursuing them, they risk missing out on real solutions
that can help people right now. And missing out on ideas that both sides of the
aisle can accept.
As a physician, I share the belief that
everyone needs to have a basic level of health insurance, just like we all have
access to public school. The problem is that several versions of Medicare for
All take the idea a step further. Under some proposals, the government would
not only provide health insurance to everyone; it would also ban most
private health insurance, effectively shutting down the industry.
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