January 25, 2016
...AND CHEAPER...:
Is Bernie Sanders right about health care? (H. Gilbert Welch, January 24, 2016, CNN)
A single payer would rein in the medical industrial complex. It would impose discipline in the introduction of new interventions, by requiring that they be tested prior to widespread adoption. It would then have the market power to ensure genuine innovations were fairly priced.To be sure, critics would be quick to point out the side effects of a single payer: rationing, "death panels," and even the loss of freedom itself. If it's that bad, why is single payer the dominant strategy for health-care financing in other developed nations?OK. We all know this is going nowhere. Even though a single payer would reduce overall health expenditures (not to mention lower premiums and out-of-pocket costs), it would mean more money would have to pass through the government (read: higher taxes). That's why you don't hear any other candidates talking about it. Universal coverage by a single payer is simply not on the political horizon.But maybe it should be.
It's a less good alternative than universal HSAs and catastrophic, but, given that modern democracies demand health care as a right, a viable one.
Posted by Orrin Judd at January 25, 2016 5:28 PM