The Washington Post Editorial Board took a harder line than Krugman, weighing in recently with an editorial entitled, "Single-payer health care would have an astonishingly high price tag." The "astonishing" figure is derived, not from a dispassioned analysis of all health plans, but from a single, highly controversial analysis of a single plan. The Urban Institute reviewed Bernie Sanders' single-payer proposal in 2016 and concluded that it would increase government spending by $32 trillion over 10 years. Single-payer opponents have been citing that figure ever since.
But that figure is "ridiculous," according to Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein of the City University of New York School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School. In a detailed rebuttal, they note that the Urban Institute's findings "project outlandish increases in the utilization of medical care, ignore vast savings under single-payer reform, and ignore the extensive and well-documented experience with single-payer systems in other nations -- which all spend far less per person on health care than we do."
The Post's editors insist that "the public piece of the American health-care system has not proven itself to be particularly cost-efficient," but this is misleading at best. Medicare, our country's only nationally-run health system, has much lower overhead costs and inflation rates than private-sector health care. You could even say they're "astonishingly" lower:
Medicare's overhead amounts to 2 percent of total costs, versus 12-14 percent for private insurers, while annual cost increases between 2010 and 2015 were 1.4 percent for Medicare and more than double that (3.0 percent) for private insurance.
It's true that our government's health care programs are costlier than their European equivalents. But what the Post's editors fail to mention is that private profit-seeking is largely responsible for the additional cost. Medicare is forced to share the road with private-sector insurers who can drive rates up, especially when for-profit corporations are increasingly driving every aspect of treatment from hospital care to provider practice management. A single-payer health system could set rates and design treatment guidelines that are based on best practices and are subject to public debate, unlike private plans.
A Change is Gonna ComeThe transition to a single-payer system will be complex, but despite what the no-can-doers say, it is achievable. None of the obstacles that are cited are insurmountable.
One-third of our health economy is already managed through government programs. Our best minds should be tackling the challenge of reforming the remaining two-thirds. We have already have built some of the infrastructure and expertise we will need.
Medicare For All is not only achievable. It's inevitable. Health care costs are already too high for most Americans, even those with "good" insurance. The demand for a better-run public system will only grow in the years to come.
It's easy to understand why the Washington Post, with its history of hostility to social spending, would oppose Medicare For All. But why is there such entrenched opposition among some liberals? Some Democrats want to defend the Affordable Care Act out of loyalty, because it's a Democratic program.
Some people have developed deep expertise in the current, flawed system. Consciously or unconsciously, they will be inclined to resist changes that render their knowledge obsolete. Other people want to be proven right about politics, and they've staked their reputation on claiming that single-payer is a "hard sell" because it will raise taxes.
Actually, it's an easy sell: I can save you thousands of dollars a year by replacing a terrible system with a much better one. People say Medicare For All is "politically unfeasible." But the past 10 years have taught us that it's politically unfeasible to aim for anything less.
Many single-payer advocates are also defending the ACA today for a very simple reason: people will die if it's repealed. But people are dying right now because we don't have a national health care system.
The best way to defend the ACA is the way Bernie Sanders is doing it. Sanders is barnstorming the country condemning Republican plans to gut the law, a move that would cause tens of thousands of needless deaths to give millionaires and billionaires a tax cut. But he is also making it clear that the ultimate goal -- the goal that reflects both the public's needs and our shared progressive values -- is Medicare For All.
Until we achieve health care for all, it's our health itself that is in jeopardy.
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