Bernie Sanders and a host of Democratic Senators have signed up for a “Medicare for All” proposal. Senator Sanders offered: “Instead of wasting hundreds of millions of dollars try to administer” separate insurance plans, “there would be one insurance plan for the American people with on single payer.”
So, in adopting the new religion of frugality in the Democratic Party, the first step in a new national healthcare plan is to eliminate hundreds of millions of dollars in insurance company healthcare administration. These insurance company administrators help reduce excess usage and fraud in the delivery of healthcare and are one of the major reasons why we read less about healthcare fraud against the insurance industry as opposed to Medicare and Social Security.
Ignoring the profit margins in the insurance industry, the remainder of the “hundreds of millions of dollars” in savings can only be accomplished through eliminating U.S. jobs. In California’s calculation of administrative savings available, they discuss $20+ billion of potential savings. So, assuming that the cost of the annual average insurance company employee is around $65,000, Senator Sanders is making a proposal to terminate somewhere between 2,500,000 to 3,000,000 U.S. jobs upon implementation of his plan.
It is a bit unusual for a socialist to make a proposal that would cost millions of jobs. It is highly unusual for a socialist to care not for the millions of lives he would be destroying overnight. The virtual overnight elimination of 3,000,000 jobs would destroy lives, plans, college for children etc., all of the things socialists are supposed to care about.
Of course, Senator Sanders does not provide more than a few clues about how the United States would pay for “Medicare for All”, why we should not conclude that “Medicare for All” will not ultimately result in all of the scandals that regularly accompany the Veterans Hospitals, or whether there will be a decline in quality or access to healthcare.
Single payer healthcare is the progressive flavor of the month. The harsh reality is that government does very few things well over the long haul. Whether it is the VA, the maintenance of bridges/roadways, the air control system, airports themselves or keeping costs of anything within reasonable limits, government generally fails us. The larger the government entity involved, the more likely the failure.
There is nothing less responsible than broad platitudes with respect to something as important as healthcare. “Medicare for All” without accompanying business plans, specifics on services offered, specifics on whether there is the doctor/nurse capacity to equal demand, specific plans on financing, the ability to continuously upgrade facilities and equipment, whether the plan would attract or push brilliant students into the medical field and thousands of other questions makes only for good headlines, not good government.
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